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In the Peak District there are many prehistoric henges or rings of stone. One of them, in a park on Ringham Moor, is called the Nine Virgins. The legend is that nine village girls were caught dancing on the Sabbath and turned to stone. Another stone, nearby, had been the Fiddler. There among the Nine Virgins, Park Ranger Mark Ryan found the body of Jenny Weston, her limbs arranged to resemble a woman dancing. This was not the first attack on a woman in Ringham Moor. Weeks earlier Maggie Crew had been attacked and her face savagely cut open. The police are mounting a herculean investigation to find the killer. Two of the police involved are Ben Cooper and Diane Fry. There is a complex symbiotic relationship between the two of them, partially antagonistic but also magnetic. Cooper is an idealistic policeman who believes that the police are there to protect the weak and the innocent as much as to catch the guilty. Fry finds this nonsense and also somehow provocative. And yet the two must work together. This is a very complex story with a great many events and subplots. Yet it is not at all difficult to keep track of all the different threads that make up the plot. This is because the characters, each and every one of them even the most minor, are so completely and painstakingly described that the reader understands and knows them well. All of them are flawed; all of them have something of value within them. All have something they want to forget or they are ashamed of. Every one of these characters from Cooper and Fry to Will and Dougie Leach tugs at the readerís heart. They are wounded and we want to help. We admire them; we like them. And we cannot forget them. Carried by this extraordinary cast of characters, the story takes us through the investigation, the events in the Park, the complications in peopleís lives, to a denouement that ties up most of the loose ends. Like life, there are some stray threads we are not certain of. We see how damaged people are by committing a crime, being a victim of a crime, or simply witnessing one. While this traces the police work to solve a crime, it is even more a study of the psychology of crime. Throughout the book are vivid and realistic descriptions of persons, places, and events that make all of them come alive. Booth is as realistic as possible in his depictions and there are no rose colored glasses to see only the pleasant parts of the world. The writing is exquisite but never gets in the way of the story. There is a marvelous sense of place and the brooding and looming moors, the seedy little towns, the desperate and sometimes hopeless farms all lodge themselves in our mindís eye and we see them over and over again. The lesson that we all learn as we read this book is the lesson Diane Fry is beginning to learn. There are no blacks and whites, only grays. Guilt and innocence are not absolutes. There are always mitigating circumstances. While this does not excuse evil, it sometimes explains it. And there are gradients of evil. Even Dante had different circles of hell reserved for different levels of guilt. And at the end of the book we may even say to ourselves, "Judge not that ye be not judged."
Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, December 2001
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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