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BLOODLESS SHADOW
by Victoria Blake
Orion, December 2003
320 pages
9.99GBP
ISBN: 0752860518


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

English crime fiction doesn't boast much of a tradition of female PIs. And what there is tends to be a mixed bag. Of course there's PD James's AN UNSUITABLE JOB FOR A WOMAN, Sarah Dunant's Hannah Wolfe series, whilst more recent efforts include those by Val McDermid, Michelle Spring and Liz Evans. I've found Spring's to be the best of an average bunch -- Dunant's felt at times too much like an intellectual exercise, whilst McDermid singularly failed to make Manchester feel trendy. And lumbering Kate Brannigan with the dozy, pot-smoking boyfriend didn't help matters.

Victoria Blake's novel BLOODLESS SHADOW has possibilities, but doesn't quite cut it either. Sam Falconer is a former world judo champion who doesn't know when to quit. She's become a private investigator after injury forced her to give up her sporting career. And, pretty much par for the genre, she has a dysfunctional family and a host of faintly dotty friends and neighbours around her. In fact, you probably wouldn't want to take afternoon tea with any of the characters in this book.

One of the book's main hitches, though, is Sam herself. Aside from her considerable sporting achievements, there's really little to recommend her. In fact, at one point she tells someone that she's not a nice person. She reminded me of one of those teenage boys whose sole method of communication is in monosyllables and who spends most of his time in the bedroom listening to Black Sabbath records.

Least convincing is her former relationship with DS Phil Howard. He's part of the investigating team, but has no personality or character to speak of. It felt like Blake had added him simply because a fouled-up love life is the done thing in crime novels. Blake surrounds Sam with strong gay characters -- brother Mark and best friend Alan -- and I'd have been a sight more convinced if Sam had either been a lesbian or single and without the ex-lover baggage.

The plot is serviceable. Sam is asked by her brother, an Oxford don, to help a friend of his whose wife has gone missing. John O'Connor is a shrink -- and here the book hits another of its snags. Rather than searching for the AWOL wife, Sam seems to spend an inordinate amount of time allowing John to pry inside her head, whilst grunting at him how much she resents what he's doing. There's a slightly more intriguing sub-plot where Sam tries to work out why she's getting letters from her SAS soldier father who died in combat.

So . . . the book is readable enough, is efficiently plotted, switches convincingly between London and Oxford, but is more than a tad flat. There's just enough there, though, to suggest that Blake might be worth watching in the future once she gathers the confidence to kick over the perceived constraints of the genre.

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, February 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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