The Cutting Place (DS Maeve Kerrigan) by Jane Casey
| The Cutting Place (DS Maeve Kerrigan) by Jane Casey | |
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| Category: Crime | |
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Reviewer: Sue Magee
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| Summary: It might be number nine in the series but it's still an excellent, lively read about the way that some men treat women. Highly recommended. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 400 | Date: April 2020 |
| Publisher: HarperCollins | |
| ISBN: 978-0008149086 | |
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Longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2021
It was Kim Weldon who found the first bits of the body - she was a mudlarker on the banks of the Thames and when she turned over what looked like a stick she realised it was a hand, a right hand, in fact. DS Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwent's team would later find three other body parts. Identification of the body was not going to be easy, but eventually, it would be given a name - Paige Hargreaves, a twenty-eight-year-old freelance journalist. Her friend, Bianca Drummond, another journalist, said that she was working on a story which she reckoned would be explosive - and she hadn't been willing to share any of the details with Bianca.
Investigations led Kerrigan to the Chiron Club and its president, Sir Marcus Gley. Maeve thought he was a charming old rogue, but he was adept at telling her very little. The members were all rich men - you had to be rich to afford the fees and Kerrigan struggled to get anything more substantial than rumours about men behaving badly with women.
Kerrigan's private life seemed to be going reasonably well. She's been seeing Seth Taylor, a solicitor, for about six months. He was good-looking, attentive and was happy to shower Maeve with gifts, delighted to take her out for meals when she was too tired to cook. She couldn't quite understand why Josh Derwent and Liv - another member of the murder team - were less keen on him. Perhaps it was Maeve's reluctance to go out socially with the team when she could be spending time with Seth. Maeve was happy to let it ride, though - she was in no hurry to settle down and she was generally having fun. After the heartbreak she'd suffered from boyfriend Rob a couple of years earlier, she thought she was in a good place.
I always have a large pile of books waiting to be read and, generally, I read them in order, but there are just a few series where I make an exception to that rule. The DS Maeve Kerrigan series is one of them. When a book comes in, it goes straight to the top of the pile. Why? Well, the writing is excellent, the characters are the ones who stick in your mind from one book to the next. I'm currently hoping that Liv's pregnancy goes well and that she and her wife enjoy the baby. I worry about Josh Derwent - he gets a personal shock in The Cutting Place which he won't come to terms with quickly. All the characters are fully-formed; even the relatively minor ones stay with you.
It's the plotting which really makes this book something special, though. 'Men taking advantage of women', I thought: it's hardly new. But then it blossomed out into something different, something rather more sinister and it became obvious that even women who seem outwardly strong can be taken advantage of.
I read the book far too quickly: I would have been happy for it to be twice as long. I just wanted to stay with the story and I can't wait for the next instalment. I'd like to thank the publishers for letting Bookbag have a review copy.
You could read this book as a standalone, but you'll get far more out of it if you start at the beginning - and it's hardly a trial to do so. The first book is The Burning and you'll find a chronological list of the books here. You might also enjoy Perfect Kill (D I Callanach) by Helen Fields.
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