The Nature of Things

Borrowed Light by Graham Hurley My rating: 3 of 5 stars In the late summer of 2009, D.I. Joe Faraday and his partner, the French anthropologist Gabrielle, are on a birding holiday in the Middle East. It is one of the happiest times that Faraday can remember. After a day trip of birding with a young guide, Faraday and Gabrielle are on their way back to their hotel with their guide driving the car. A moment of inattention by the driver leads to a near collision with a big truck and he swerves to avoid the head-on smash. And instead hits a tree. Neither the driver nor Faraday, also in the front seat, had bothered to put on their seat belts. The driver was crushed against the steering wheel and died. Faraday was thrown through the windshield and suffered severe head injuries. Gabrielle, in the back seat and with her seat belt on, suffered only minor injuries. From that fateful day forward, it seems that Joe Faraday's life is in a downward spiral. He is taken to a hospital which is sho...

My rating: 3 of 5 stars The more I spend time in the company of Detective Inspector Joe Faraday and former Detective Constable Paul Winter the more I enjoy that company. I find myself feeling rather sad to be leaving them when the book has ended. That often happens with series that I enjoy and I do read a lot of series. Beyond Reach was number 10 in the Faraday/Winter series. Fortunately for me, there are still a couple more left. The thing that makes this particular series so enjoyable for me are the disparate personalities of the two main characters. Faraday is the buttoned-up committed lifer in the Job (always written with a capital J), i.e, the police. As the series has progressed, we see his frustration growing with the Job and with the direction that his society seems to be taking. Moreover, he longs for a committed relationship with a woman he can love, but it often seems that that is never going to happen. His solace from all his frustrations is Nature, and especially the bird...

My rating: 3 of 5 stars Bazza Mackenzie, Portsmouth's drug king turned (mostly) respectable businessman, lives in an upscale neighborhood of the city next door to a judge, his wife, and teenage daughter. Like any good neighbor, Bazza promises to keep an eye on the judge's house while he and his wife go on a South Sea sailing adventure. The teenage daughter is left behind on her own and while the parents are away, she decides to throw a party. She announces the party on her Facebook page, and on the designated night for the party, more than 100 kids descend on the house. Things get quickly out of control and the party turns into a riot. The judge's beautiful house is completely trashed. Bazza and his wife, Marie, had been out that night to their own party. They came home late to find the riot in progress. Bazza wades in to try to bring order and gets a beating for his trouble. Marie calls the police and waits outside for them to arrive. When they do, she turns to go inside b...

My rating: 3 of 5 stars Graham Hurley is a very effective writer of police procedurals. He has a sure feel for the way that police officers think and operate and a succinct method of writing about those things that brings them vividly to life. The setting for Hurley's Faraday/Winter novels is the island city of Portsmouth off England's south coast and its nearby rival city of Southampton. The city is known to locals by the affectionate nickname of Pompey and that is the name that is often used throughout the novels, especially in those sections that are told from DC Winter's viewpoint. It is a city that has a seafaring history - and present - and is mad about its football team. The city and its surrounding area are major characters in these stories. One can't imagine them happening anywhere else. Throughout the Faraday/Winter series, a recurring character has been the local crime lord Bazza Mackenzie. The police have tried repeatedly to bring him down but have been nota...