When police detective Will Grayson and his partner, Helen Walker, investigate the violent death of Stephen Bryan, a gay academic, their first thoughts are of an ill-judged sexual encounter or a fatal lovers’ quarrel: The man’s face was like a glove that had been pulled inside out. But they soon shift focus to the book Bryan was writing about the life and mysterious death of fifties film star Stella Leonard. While Bryan’s sister puts herself in danger by conducting her own investigation, Grayson and Walker peel away the secrets of a family blighted by a lust for wealth and power and by its perverted sexuality. On the heels of his critically acclaimed Frank Elder series, John Harvey delivers a page-turner both subtle and devastating.From Publishers WeeklyAcclaimed British author Harvey takes a break from his popular Charlie Resnick series (Lonely Hearts, etc.) with this well-written but unexciting police procedural. Stephen Bryan, a gay academic specializing in film studies, has been bludgeoned to death in his shower. Cambridge Det. Insp. Will Grayson and Det. Sgt. Helen Walker soon focus on Bryan's spurned lover, Mark McKusick, but the theft of one of Bryan's manuscripts, which deals with a 1950s film star whose great-niece is now one of the bad girls of British cinema, leads the detectives to wonder whether the professor's digging into the past led to his murder. While the solution is anticlimactic and the excerpts from a fictional screenplay add little to the plot or atmosphere, Grayson and Walker emerge as fully developed characters whose choice of career has taken its toll on their health and family lives. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistStarred Review Along with his Frank Elder series, the successor to the now-classic Charlie Resnick novels, Harvey writes the occasional stand-alone. This one, set, like both of his series, in Nottingham, moves in a new direction for the multitalented author, whose usual milieu is the mean streets of the inner city, where poverty and racism breed crime. Here, on the other hand, he takes us behind the closed doors of the powerful, where closeted secrets rattle their chains until violence erupts. Two stories come together as police detectives Will Grayson and Helen Walker investigate the bludgeoning death of a gay film historian. Was it a crime of passion, or did the scholar’s current project, a biography of 1950s actress Stella Leonard, whose death mirrored the demise of the character she played in a celebrated film noir, somehow move the killer to action? The investigation proceeds, in typically detailed fashion, with the detectives fighting their way out of seeming dead ends while dealing with multiple personal issues; but this time the story has a new level, as Harvey juxtaposes flashbacks to the actress’ life and snippets from the script of her classic film. By doing so, that sense of inevitability, which is at the heart of film noir, re-creates itself offscreen, producing a frisson that drives the action, with past and present feeding off one another much in the manner of Ross Macdonald. More successfully, perhaps, than any other writer of a successful mystery series, Harvey continues to reinvent himself in novel after novel. --Bill Ott

“Harvey’s series about Charlie Resnick, the jazz-loving, melancholy cop in provincial Nottingham, England, has long been one of the finest police procedural series around.”—Publishers Weekly“The characters in John Harvey’s urban crime novels are so defiantly alive and unruly that they put these British police procedurals on a shelf by themselves.”—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review“Harvey reminds me of Graham Greene, a stylist who tells you everything you need to know while keeping the prose clean and simple. It’s a very realistic style that draws you into the story without the writer getting in the way.”—Elmore Leonard“Charlie Resnick is one of the most fully realized characters in modern crime fiction.”—Sue GraftonThe first major case for Charlie Resnick and his team concerns a number of increasingly serious attacks on women who have been using the “Lonely Hearts” column of the local newspaper. Simultaneously, Resnick becomes involved with Rachel Chaplin, the social worker assigned to a family caught up in allegations of child abuse.John Harvey’s Charlie Resnick is British crime fiction’s best-kept secret. In the ten novels Harvey wrote about Resnick before ending the series, he established his character as a believable ordinary policeman who investigated ordinary, everyday crime, rooted in the socioeconomic plight and drab lives of many people in the city of Nottingham.Bloody Brits Press will reissue the entire Inspector Charles Resnick series in the next three seasons.From Publishers WeeklyBritish detective Charlie Resnick--middle-aged, overweight, divorced and disillusioned--investigates the murders of two women who shared nothing except their use of the local paper's lonely-hearts column to meet men. "Harvey introduces an appealing and memorable new series character in this, his seventh mystery," commented PW . Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review"John Harvey's Inspector Charlie Resnick sequence has set the benchmark for the British police procedural" -- Val McDermid "John Harvey's Resnick novels are far and away the finest British police procedurals ever written" GQ

"Charlie Resnick is one of the most fully realized characters in modern crime fiction."--Sue Grafton"Such satisfying reading. No wasted time here."--"Publishers Weekly"When Nancy Phelan, a young woman who works at the housing office, is kidnapped from outside the office's Christmas party, suspicion falls on a young client who attacked her earlier that day. Little in Resnick's life is that simple, however, especially at Christmas, and as the mystery of Nancy's disappearance deepens, the most trusted of his team, Lynn Kellogg, unwittingly puts herself in the path of a dangerous psychopath.

“If John Harvey’s novels were songs, Charlie Parker would play them. Cutting Edge sings the blues for people too bruised to carry the tune for themselves. Writing in a minor key to tell this moody revenge tragedy, Mr. Harvey creates characters of astonishing psychological diversity. Their voices are abrasive and often husky with pain; but in the end, they all sing their song.”—The New York Times Book ReviewSeveral members of staff at the local hospital have been seriously attacked at night with a scalpel. Charlie Resnick strives to find a connection between them before assault becomes murder.From Publishers WeeklyIn his third outing, after Rough Treatment , tough and reflective British copper Charlie Resnick investigates a series of brutal attacks on medical personnel at a large Midlands hospital. The perpetrator of the crimes exhibits an appalling ability to maim his victims in a manner that, besides traumatizing them, will destroy their careers. A promising young surgeon is dealt a crippling assault to his leg and hand; a male nurse, whose parents consider his work not quite "manly," is almost emasculated. The assailant's psychological insight and understanding of anatomy suggest that he belongs to the medical commuity. As Resnick acquaints himself with the lives of the victims, their families and lovers, he discovers a level of desperation where reality is denied and self-worth destroyed. Credibly portrayed policewomen add further interest to this superior novel in which suspense derives not only from questions about what will happen next, but from Harvey's talent in creating a sense of wonder about the depths of human character. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsThird in the author's compelling series featuring Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick and the men and women he works with in a northern English city. Charlie--introspective, divorced, comforted by his cats and jazz records--is, at the moment, immersed in trying to find the culprit in three slashing attacks, one of them fatal, all seemingly related in some way to the city's major hospital. Subplots abound; major and minor characters cut in and out--all of them vital whether revolting, respectable, or in-between. Tension mounts as Charlie and his team slog away at the investigation; overcome a major glitch; save a fourth victim--and solve their case. Harvey's police procedurals are in a class by themselves (Lonely Hearts, etc.)--near Dickensian in their portrayal of human frailty; cinematic in their quick changes of scene and character; totally convincing in their plotting and motivation. His latest is all of these--one more to be prized. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A peculiar pair of burglars make a deal with one of their victimsMaria Roy is in the tub, musing on her hatred for her movie producer husband, when Grabianski and Grice break into her house. Though she is fearful at first, something about Jerry Grabianski’s confidence calms her down. Over tall glasses of Scotch, she directs them to her valuables—jewelry, bonds, her wedding tape—even doing them the favor of unlocking her husband’s safe. There Grabianski finds a surprise: a kilo of cocaine. He leaves with the drugs, the valuables, and a piece of Maria’s heart. This is not the story she tells to police inspector Charlie Resnick, but Maria’s confusion makes the disheveled detective doubt her account of the robbery. As he combs Nottingham for the burglars, Maria and Jerry’s love affair charges ahead. She is about to learn that not even love can keep crime from turning bloody.

From the master of British Crime Writing comes Frank Elder's last case.'An expertly plotted and moving final act for an old-school investigator of the best sort, from a true master of the genre' Guardian Books of the Month'This is wonderfully atmospheric crime writing – a tribute to Harvey's exceptional talent' Daily Mail'The heavy manacles around the girl's wrists, perhaps not surprisingly, looked very much like the ones that had been found on the studio floor. For a moment, she had a vision of the chain to which they were attached being swung through the air, taking on force and speed before striking home.Then swung again.'When his estranged daughter Katherine appears on his doorstep, ex-Detective Frank Elder knows that something is wrong.Katherine has long been troubled, and Elder has always felt powerless to help her. But now Katherine has begun to self-destruct.The breakdown of her affair...

Jack Kiley, a professional footballer turned private investigator, is hired to track down a solider who has gone missing while on leave from Iraq. The soldier's mind is disturbed by what he has seen and done in the war, and he is armed. There are fears both for the man himself and for the safety of his estranged wife and two young children. Kiley's search leads him to Nottingham, where he teams up with D. I. Charlie Resnick. Together they search the house where the soldier's wife and children have been living and find them gone, almost certainly taken against their will… the only question now is, will they find them before it is too late? Trouble in Mind brings together two of John Harvey’s major characters.

Nick lives on a tough estate in north London. On his sixteenth birthday, his mother gives him a box left to him all those years ago. The contents lead Nick to discover what took his father from being a successful blues singer to taking his own life. Against a background of shifting allegiances, involving the violent gangs on the estate and his first serious involvement with a girl, Nick is forced to come to terms, not only with whom his father was but who he is himself.

Short stories from the masters of crime fiction.Little is perfect for the men in these seventeen crime stories and nothing is straightforward. The worlds they inhabit are as different as a deprived London housing estate and a rundown jazz joint in Manhattan, but each of them is striving to determine what is right, what will give them dignity, what will earn them self-respect. Some succeed. Others fail. In this acclaimed collection of stories, John Harvey has gathered together some of the very best names in contemporary crime writing. Together these writers answer what it is to be a father, a son, a man. Authors are: Mark Billingham, Lawrence Block, Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, John Harvey, Reginald Hill. Bill James, Dennis Lehane, Bill Moody, George P. Pelecanos, Peter Robinson, James Sallis, John Straley, Brian Thompson, Don Winslow, Daniel Woodrell, and a novella by Andrew Coburn.