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Dan Groves is an ambitious young TV crime reporter with two big stories on his hands. A serial rapist is on the loose and threatening six attacks. Meanwhile, a dying artist has created a complex riddle in a series of paintings. Dan's got a good police contact in the shape of DCI Adam Breen, so he gets exclusive access to the enquiry as the cops try to hunt the rapist, who is leaving a bizarre calling card at each crime scene. And Dan's also caught the eye of the artist, Joseph McCluskey, whose set of ten paintings called The Death Pictures contain a riddle which will lead whoever can crack it to an expensive prize. But the painter is murdered before the answer can be revealed. THE DEATH PICTURES is apparently the second outing for Dan, but it stands pretty satisfactorily on its own. Author Simon Hall is a BBC crime correspondent, and, as you'd expect, the newsroom and newsgathering scenes are absolutely spot-on. You get the feeling Hall has worked with a fair few of the people influencing these characters – limerick-spouting photographer El reminds me of someone I used to see around, and everyone who's worked in the media will have come across Lizzie the impossible to please news editor with the scary shoes! Dan's an interesting character – he's ambitious, pushy, not entirely likeable, but human. I could take or leave the messy love life scenes, but Hall portrays a man entirely focussed on his job but susceptible to periods of intense depression. By contrast, Adam Breen's not such a convincing character. He has a tendency to declaim some rather wooden dialogue. In fact, none of the police fare as well as the journalists do in the development stakes – I was hoping for more from Breen's under-drawn female colleagues Suzanne and Claire. Hall does pretty well juggling his two plot lines, although I must admit to finding the art one the most unusual and intriguing. The snag with the rape story was that there appeared to be a real 'eh?' jump of logic to produce a suspects' shortlist. What you've got with THE DEATH PICTURES, though, if you can overlook some slightly clunky writing and characterisation in places, is an unusual page-turner featuring a very compelling media setting and a hero who for once isn't superman. I'd definitely be interested in reading another outing for Dan and his Plymouth crime beat.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, June 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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