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Jack Nightingale used to be a police negotiator, but he left the job after he failed to save a young girl from jumping to her death from an upper story window. The death of the father who had been abusing her in similar circumstances threw suspicion on Jack when he failed to prevent his death as well, but Jack has never revealed what happened on that day. Now it looks very much as if the girl he failed to save then needs his help again now. Jack is receiving messages from beyond the grave again, but are they really coming from Sophie's spirit, or is there a more sinister origin for the voices that Jack is hearing? As well as having to contend with the forces of darkness that constantly dog his heels – quite literally in the case of Proserpine and her collie – Jack is once again the object of Superintendent Chalmers suspicion. Jack is hauled out of bed in the middle of the night by armed police and taken to a hospital where a gang member, shot in the head by an unknown assailant and left for dead with irretrievable brain damage, speaks Jacks's name. Naturally Chalmers believes the man is identifying his attacker, and when he subsequently dies, Jack is in the frame for murder and has to attempt to prove his innocence both to the police and the man's fellow gang members. The third Jack Nightingale thriller is on familiar ground with Jack yet again under suspicion by the police whilst trying to save the soul of an innocent. There is less writing on mirrors in blood and fewer random deaths, but as ever, good advice is ignored, and for a man who seems to be too broke to get his unreliable car fixed, Jack is remarkably blasé when it comes to ascertaining whether the arson-damaged mansion he inherited is even insured or not before commissioning repairs. He also takes few – if any – steps to safeguard a library that is potentially worth millions of pounds. I have read the two previous books and for me this is a series that fails to live up to its promise. The world-building lacks depth and the demons all bear a remarkable resemblance to each other, lacking much in the way of originality or personality. Even Proserpine, by far the most interesting of the supernatural opponents, is woefully underused in this book. The same is true of the human characters. Joshua Wainwright, the wealthy book collector, is used as little more than a convenient source of funds whenever Jack gets short of money and is never allowed to develop the hints of personality that do surface. To make matters worse, the ending struck me as a massive cop-out on all possible levels. I can't imagine Leather has left himself anywhere to go with Jack Nightingale now and for all their flashes of interest, the books failed to live up to the calibre of his other thrillers. § Linda Wilson is a writer, and retired solicitor, with an interest in archaeology and cave art, who now divides her time between England and France.
Reviewed by Linda Wilson, December 2011
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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