Cold in Hand

John Harvey's DI Charlie Resnick was last seen in full-length format in `Last Rites' in 1998. I, and I'm sure a lot of other long-term fans, thought that book brought the series to a close. Didn't the title indicate chosen by JH indicate this?

Well, apparently not: `Cold in Hand' (the title comes from another one of Charlie's beloved jazz classics) brings the character back, and it's a very welcome return after JH's last novel - the readable, but slightly lacklustre `Gone To Ground'.

The world has advanced in real time (more or less) so Charlie's near retirement age here. And he's shacked-up with the much younger DI Lynne Kellogg, who'd always longed-for Charlie from afar. Colleagues such as Graham Millington, Kevin Naylor, Keith Devine, and his former boss Jack Skelton have all left the scene, as has one of his beloved cats.

Things are looking much cosier for Charlie on the domestic side, but there's major heartache around the corner...

Lynne Kellogg is caught in the centre of a fatal shooting involving two rival street gangs, and although not seriously harmed she's accused by the murdered girl's family of using their daughter as a human shield.

She's also involved in two other ongoing murder investigations, including that of a young immigrant girl who works in a massage parlour. Tied in with this is a sub-plot involving gun running, and an oily piece of work from SOCA (Serious & Organised Crime Agency) called Daines has re-entered Lynne's life.

I don't want to give anything away, but this is literally a book of two halves. You would be forgiven for thinking it's not a Resnick novel at all when reading the first part as he's almost a peripheral character - with Lynne Kellogg holding centre stage. SPOILER WARNING: At the end of part one however, there's a tragic twist and Charlie, along with a gorgeous tall black officer called Karen Shields who's brought up from the Met to lead a certain investigation, comes to the fore in part two.

There's a large cast of people in this one, but they're all so well delineated that you're never confused about who's who. And as for the main character, well, in previous books, when Charlie went through a crisis or suffered pangs about asking a lady out we went through it with him. This decent, shambolically dressed man who conjured-up fantastic sandwiches from odd bits left in the back of the fridge was a real, living, breathing human being. And here you're almost reduced to tears as he tries to make sense of a tragedy that occurs (I'm choosing my words carefully here!)

Harvey the master craftsman ties everything up superbly well. It's a most satisfying novel and a very strong entry in the series. I'm sure all Resnick fans will enjoy it. However, in construction it's different from all of the others and at over 400 pages, comfortably the longest. You don't have to have read any previous Resnick novels to appreciate this and I'm convinced any newcomers to the series who read `Cold in Hand' will want to read the entire sequence in order, starting with `Lonely Hearts'.

John Harvey has always been a writers' writer: appreciated by his fellow professionals while never achieving quite the vast readership his skills deserve. This book may finally catapult him right up there with the genre's big hitters.

The good news is it looks very much as though Mr Harvey intends bringing the character back for at least one more novel. Long live Charlie Resnick!

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