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David Raker is back again, hunting for a retired detective chief superintendent at Homicide and Serious Crime Command in London. Leonard Franks disappeared without a trace nine months ago and the trail is cold – in fact, there was really no trail that the police could find. He vanished into thin air.
Thus begins Tim Weaver's fifth novel in his series about private missing-persons investigator David Raker. He is hired by Franks' daughter, also a police officer whom Raker has crossed swords with in earlier novels. She, like her father, plays it close to the chest and is very hard to read. This puts Raker at a disadvantage, casting doubt on many of her actions. She insists she just wants the truth, but as David has learned the hard way, "Everyone wanted the truth until they got it."
Franks was famous for being a clean cop, admired by everyone, promoted to more and more trusted positions. As the title FALL FROM GRACE hints, Raker finds clues that make him doubt Franks' lily-white reputation. Then all the evidence he has accumulated disappears in a robbery and when he finds the perp, he turns out to be a real piece of work. Neil Reynolds, ex-cop with a shady record, so pale that his nickname is Milk, demonstrates that he will stop at nothing, absolutely nothing, to end Raker's investigation.
David's wife died early in their marriage, but recently he has discovered that he has a daughter by an early girlfriend. He is developing a relationship with Annabel and her eight year-old-sister. Neil Reynolds, who seems to know everything about Raker, has the perfect tool to bring Raker's investigation to a halt.
Reynolds is first traced to an abandoned glassworks in a seedy part of London where the evidence in the case is burned in a kiln. But the hunt leads out to Devon, and finally to an abandoned mental hospital. Somehow this eerie place on an island becomes the centre of the case. Raker, who grew up in Devon, knows the place. His mother had warned him as a child that it was somewhere very bad.
Franks, the missing man, is probably not dead; in fact he seems to be hiding, and now Raker has to figure out why. He slowly builds a case but has to risk his life over and over, as Reynolds or some other enemy chases, attacks and draws him further into danger.
And then it is over. The case winds up and the unhappy truth is found. But wait, there are 25 pages left. What is there left to reveal?
Tim Weaver steps in and manages to dig deeper and turn the whole case upside down, place Raker's life in danger again, get several more people slaughtered and finally unravel a plot thicker than the fog around Bethlehem Mental Hospital. Deftly done, Weaver. This ending is really dark, and he even hints at the next case David Raker will take on. Can't wait.
§ Susan Hoover is a playwright, independent producer and retired college English teacher. She lives in Nova Scotia.
Reviewed by Susan Hoover, July 2016
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