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Be warned: this is one of those 'If you have tears, prepare to shed them now' books. I doubt there is a parent alive who could resist at least a sniffle on reading it. It certainly has all the ingredients - a child in need of a new liver, knowing full well she will die without; her boyfriend with the same knowledge, her mother, desperate to make it happen, working for a debt collection agency, the street kids from whom the organs are harvested.... Yes, a tear jerker without a doubt. Lynn Beckett is the mother of Caitlin, a child cursed with liver disease who lies dying in a Brighton hospital. Lynn is divorced and gets very little moral support from her former husband, Caitlin's father. To add to Lynn's woes, she has developed Type Two diabetes (although this scarcely makes an impact on the narrative, not being mentioned beyond the first few pages.) Caitlin's condition, on the other hand, has progressed to a stage where the only treatment is a transplant. Meanwhile, the police have a problem. The bodies of three teenagers have been found in the sea, minus some of their vital organs. Roy Grace is put in charge of Operation Neptune. Simona is a street child in Romania. Her idea of bliss is to be able to obtain some metallic paint and inhale the fumes. It's not the sort of thing calculated to prolong life nor, for that matter, to bestow a decent quality of life, but it's what she has - and organ thieves are likely to steal even that from her. There are people preying on the street kids of Romania, promising them a better life in England together with a job and an apartment. Who could resist such wonderful temptations? James creates some real people in this outing, with the despair of the characters, both the street kids and Caitlin's mother very well presented. The baddies, such as they are, are bleakly drawn and seemingly quite without hearts. There is the inevitable reference to Roy Grace's wife, Sandy, who vanished more than a decade previously, but, since he has acquired a girlfriend with whom he is very much in love, in this adventure, any urgency to find her has dissipated. In fact, I found all references to her somewhat annoying and a waste of time, as a diversion. It would be nice if the author would resolve the case. Perhaps he might look at resurrecting her, then having Roy Grace investigate her murder. I think Peter James has done medicine a service by making readers aware of the need for organs and how they can make a positive contribution by going on a donor list. As far as the plot of this novel goes, I found that there was a bit too much that was not resolved contained in it. It was, too, not quite as gripping (for this reviewer, at any rate) as previous books. I hope the next novel is a bit more tightly constructed.
Reviewed by Denise Pickles, June 2009
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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