Yesterday's Papers - Martin Edwards

I've read two of Martin Edwards's books featuring Liverpool lawyer Harry Devlin over the past couple of weeks. I Remember You & Yesterday's Papers. 

I Remember You is a story of murder & deception with its roots in Northern Ireland. Finbar Rogan, one of Harry's clients, is having a run of bad luck. His tattooing business is burnt down, he thinks he's being followed & a bomb is found strapped to the bottom of his car. Finbar has plenty of enemies from his ex-wife to various disgruntled husbands & boyfriends whose women he's seduced. The story also involves a local radio station that features local personalities on the morning show to discuss the news & play a few favourite songs - on one memorable occasion, Harry is featured. The story is fast paced &, as always, well-plotted. Harry is an immensely sympathetic character, still mourning the death of his wife, Liz, two years before & not ready to move on emotionally from her loss. He's never going to be highly paid but he's honest, compassionate & always does his best for his clients, even if that means getting too involved in their affairs & doing a little investigation on the side.

Yesterday's Papers begins as Harry meets Ernest Miller, an elderly man who has been researching a famous murder case of the 1960s. Carole Jeffries, a beautiful 16 year old girl was found dead in Sefton Park near her home, strangled with her own scarf. Edwin Smith was convicted of Carole's murder but before he could be executed, he committed suicide in prison. Now, all these years later, Miller is convinced that Edwin Smith was innocent. He was an inadequate young man who fancied Carole but had never had a chance with her. He was an easy & obvious suspect & Miller thinks the police didn't look any further once they discovered that Smith knew some details of the murder scene that only the killer could know.

Miller wants to look at the legal files of the case & Harry's firm has just bought the practice of Smith's solicitor, Cyril Tweats. Tweats was an incompetent lawyer but amazingly stayed in business until retirement. Harry is intrigued & agrees to look through Tweats's notes on the case. Against his will, he becomes involved, even though he finds Miller's interest in the case a little distasteful. Carole's murder had a devastating effect on her family. Her father, a prominent political writer & lecturer, was crushed by his daughter's death & began drinking which destroyed his career. Several other men, including Carole's pop star boyfriend, her employer, Benny Frederick & Clive Doxey, a family friend but now a prominent justice campaigner, could all be in the frame if Edwin Smith was innocent.

Harry becomes increasingly intrigued by the case &, after Ernest Miller's death from a fall during an asthma attack, he discovers the source of Miller's information about the case & begins to wonder if his death was a little too convenient for one of the men he now suspects may have been the real killer of Carole Jeffries.

This is the most complex of the Devlin books so far. Martin Edwards wrote a post about the book on his blog just a couple of weeks ago & he says that it was a new departure for him. It's a story with several strands & more than one murder to be solved & not all of the murders are in the past. The atmosphere of 1960s Liverpool, home to the Beatles & the Mersey sound, is beautifully described & Edwards obviously has a great nostalgia for the period & its music.

Luckily I still have three more Harry Devlin books to read & I'm so pleased that the digital revolution has lead to the series now being available as ebooks. I'm also lucky enough to have a pre-publication copy of Martin's latest book in the Lake District series, The Frozen Shroud, courtesy of NetGalley & I can't wait to read that.

Suspicious Minds - Martin Edwards

Harry Devlin is a Liverpool lawyer who we first met in All the Lonely People. In that book, Harry's estranged wife, Liz, was murdered &, finding himself a suspect, he decides to do a little investigating of his own to discover the killer. In Suspicious Minds, Harry is still mourning Liz & still getting too involved in his clients' problems.

Jack Stirrup is a businessman who made a fortune in the wine business. His wife, Alison, has disappeared & the police suspect that Jack had something to do with it. Alison's mother, Doreen, has always hated Jack & she's pushing the police to arrest him even though there's no evidence to suggest that Alison is dead. Jack's daughter from his first marriage, Claire, is a sulky teenager who disliked her stepmother & is driving her father crazy with her relationship with law student Peter Kuiper. Jack disapproves of Kuiper but his disapproval only makes Claire more determined to pursue the relationship. Jack isn't short of enemies, including ex-employee Trevor Morgan, sacked for harassing the female staff.

Then there's the Beast. A series of attacks on young, blonde women has everyone worried. The attacks have escalated from indecent assault to rape. Has blonde Alison become the Beast's latest victim? Harry can't be sure that Jack wasn't involved in Alison's disappearance & he does what he can to find out where Alison is. But, when Claire goes missing & is then found murdered, her body surrounded by red roses, the case becomes much more complicated.

I'm so pleased that the Harry Devlin series is available again. Harry is a flawed but sympathetic character. The suspicious minds of the title include Harry himself as he tentatively pursues a relationship with barrister Valerie Kaiwar & finds himself unsure of her feelings & jealous of her close friendship with a colleague. Harry is a fair, honest lawyer who does his best for his clients but isn't always able to sort out his own life. There's a melancholy about Harry that's very appealing.

The Liverpool setting is gritty & I love the details of Harry's office life with incompetent & unhelpful staff & his calm, unflappable partner, Joe Crusoe. The pace is snappy & the plot is as tangled as any crime fan could wish. I also love the fact that the books are about 200 pages long. I'm not a fan of very long mystery novels. I think the ideal length for a mystery is 200-250 pages, probably because I enjoy reading the Golden Age novelists who rarely wrote long novels. Martin Edwards improves on a lot of the writers of that period though because he values character & place as much as plot & puzzle. I'm so pleased that I have five more novels in the series to read.

All the Lonely People - Martin Edwards

Harry Devlin arrives home on the night of his 32nd birthday to find his estranged wife, Liz, sitting in the living room, wearing one of his T shirts, as if she'd never left. Harry is a Liverpool lawyer & he's spent the last two years hoping that Liz would come back. She'd left him for a gym owner & small-time crook, Michael Coghlan, when she realised that Harry could never provide the money for the lifestyle Liz aspired to. Now, she begs Harry to let her stay for a while. She wants to leave Coghlan but not to return to Harry. Liz has met a man she thinks is the love of her life - if only he weren't married & dithering about leaving his wife. She's afraid of Coghlan & thinks she's being followed. The next night, Liz arranges to meet Harry at the Ferry Club but doesn't show up & doesn't return to his flat. Harry is woken early the next morning by two policemen who tell him Liz is dead. She'd been found stabbed to death in an alleyway.

Initially Harry finds himself under suspicion as the police are sceptical of his story. Harry can only think of revenging himself on Coghlan who he's sure is behind Liz's murder. So, he begins his own investigation. Tracking down Coghlan immerses Harry in Liverpool's underworld & leads him into danger as Coghlan & then his lawyer try to warn him off. Harry also discovers a lot about the woman he loved. Liz was a fascinating, desirable but shallow woman who had several men lusting after her. The list of potential suspects grows as Harry talks to Liz's sister, brother-in-law & a childhood friend, but Harry is focused on Coghlan as he tries to find any evidence against him while also exonerating himself.

All the Lonely People is the first book in the Harry Devlin series. Harry is a great character, in the tradition of the lone detective walking the mean streets of Chandler & Hamnett. He's honest, sensitive, kind but tough & determined. Foolish sometimes in the way he stubbornly keeps searching for the truth even after a brutal bashing that almost kills him. Martin Edwards describes Harry's world beautifully. The soul-destroying atmosphere of the courts & police station, the sleazy clubs & the refuse tip where Harry goes to follow up a lead - this is the darker side of Liverpool. Harry's not quite alone though. His partner, Jim Crusoe, bored receptionist Suzanne & needy neighbour, Brenda, are well-rounded characters who add a lot to the plot as well as helping the reader get to know Harry. All the Lonely People is an excellent start to the series.

Luckily for crime fans, all of the Harry Devlin books are now back in print. My copy of All the Lonely People is a recent reprint from crime publishers, Arcturus. The whole series is also now available as e-books or POD paperbacks from Andrews UK & I'm very pleased that my library has added them to our e-book collection. I read Waterloo Sunset a couple of years ago & I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series from the beginning while I wait impatiently for the next book in Martin's Lake District series. Luckily as this post on Martin's blog makes clear, I won't have too much longer to wait!