So we’ll put together

Another goodie from Mr Forder. The only thing that would have helped was a map! Keep ‘em coming please!

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Outstanding

Complex storylines and similarly complex, well fleshed out characters. No one gets that balance in these police procedurals right - the mix between personal and professional. Here you can't wait for more of either. Starting the next one now.

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1 person found this helpful

I was confused

with the timeline as apparently this is book 5 in the series not book 3 as it says in the title details and story summary. However, it was a good listen and I do enjoy the main characters.

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Excellent

I just love the DI Bliss Series and have totally engaged with the characters. Absolutely brilliant, great story lines, excellent characters - can’t wait for the next one.

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2 people found this helpful

Well-written police procedural

Tony J Forder's name was unknown to me until the start of this year but now I'm into the third available UK police procedural, with a rather flawed Detective Inspector Bliss as the central but not dominant character. Set in Peterborough, which lies in Cambridgeshire or Northamptonshire, depending on allegiances, it is around 75 miles from London, in rather low and flat Fen country. The atmosphere of this city with its historic cathedral set on the River Nene and its post-World War II New Town developments, the crime rate is scarcely different from the national average and varies from petty theft to murder. D.I. (Jimmy) Bliss is something of a tragic figure, who lost his wife to murder, by another copper. Unsurprisingly, Bliss has somehow never been able to make affective relationships work. It is well-known in police forces, especially in the UK, that sergeants and inspectors are essentially the crime busters. If you want to stay in the work as a line manager and be involved in criminal cases, then the lesson is never to get promoted. Hampered by paperwork and bureaucracy, along with the outsourcing or privatisation of many vital services, the work of the average copper means he/she needs eyes in the back of the head and body armour, necessarily around the back.

A particularly informative insight lies in the clashes between lead investigators and senior officers, especially hard-driving females: some of whom have been fast-tracked, yet seemingly never have pounded a beat, driven a police car with blues and twos, let alone dealing with the seamy figures in the criminal world or down and outs in the gutter. I have seen this state of affairs first hand and I emphasize strongly this is not a characterization/criticism of the many gifted and able women who work in the closed societies of police and intelligence. However, it points to increasing managerialism in the services, along with the more dubious practices of outsourcing or privatizing necessary police functions.

For me, discovering D.I. Bliss and his team has immediately put the author into the front rank of English crime writers. Although age is catching up, for Bliss and his junior officers he is fighting on many fronts: bureaucracy behind and around, with crime in the forefront, all of which make an unholy mix. The flawed hero who engaged in swinging with his wife in younger days in London, and now can't quite get over the effects, suffering from tinnitus and side effects, he is all too human: so too the accompanying figures about which we learn more with each book. I hope Mr Fordey can continue with his fine work. I have no hesitation in giving this five stars on all counts and the narrator manages to capture edgy performance and the effects of long hours, rough meals, too much coffee and the other ills that affect those who guard law-abiding members of the community.

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Brilliant

These books just get better & better. Just sorry that it won’t be long until I’ve read them all!

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