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This is the third book in Bannister's Brodie Farrell series. Brodie, left alone with a young daughter and forced to find some sort of work, has discovered that she is good at finding things. She is not a private investigator, but if one wants a specific piece of china or an unusual painting, Brodie can usually find it. She also from time to time finds people. In this story she is hired by Hugo Daws, a South African. His brother Robert Daws has apparently murdered his wife and then disappeared, leaving two young girls behind. Hugo and his wife had temporarily come from South Africa to England to care for them but they could not stay long and red tape and bureaucracy would require that the girls stay in England for some weeks before they could go to South Africa. So Brodie is hired to find Serena Daws's sister who, it is hoped, would be willing to care for the girls. Brodie's lover, Police Superintendent Jack Deacon, is in charge of the investigation into Serena's murder and Robert's disappearance. And her best friend, Daniel Hood, is hired to tutor the two girls while they remain in England. Someone breaks into the house where they live, some other inauspicious and frightful things transpire, and Daniel begins to understand what is truly occurring. As always Bannister's characters come alive for us. The greatest strengths of all her books are the empathetic believable authentic people who inhabit them. They are all flawed human beings. Brodie is vulnerable especially where her child is concerned. Deacon is a man who acts rather than deliberates, and he often forges ahead regardless of the consequences. Daniel is the most intriguing of the three. In the first book in the series he suffered appalling treatment and he still, understandably, has panic attacks which make him unable to teach full-time. He has a most highly developed sense of right and wrong, and he must follow his beliefs even when they might hurt him or someone else. Superintendent Deacon gets very impatient with this attitude, and even Brodie at one point questions it. The other characters are also well-drawn. Peris, the black wife of Hugo Daws, is an appealing person. She lives with racism all the time and quietly deals with it. The two young girls (they are 11 and 14) are intelligent but emotionally scarred because they all but witnessed the murder of their mother. The young man from across the road, who was having an affair with Serena, is quietly afraid of all that is happening. The plot is where I had a limited problem with this book. For some reason I figured out early on where the story was going (and I very rarely do that). So there was little sense of surprise for me when the big denouement occurred. The suspense, especially in the last part of the book, was well done. But it seemed like very little happened until that time. We learned about the people, we saw how their relationships changed, but there was little investigation. The book really focuses more on the people than on the story. But Jo Bannister writes very well and I will read anything she writes. It's just that this one did not quite fulfil the expectations that I always feel when I begin one of her books.
Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, January 2004
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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