Cutting Edge

It was a happy day a few years ago that I began to read John Harvey. This is the favorite of my series.

Cutting Edge


John Harvey


After a long shift at the hospital Doctor Tim Fletcher is exhausted but is looking forward to spending time with his girl friend  Karen. He knows that he is late so he stops to make a call to her at a telephone near the exit door of the hospital. There is no answer but Fletcher quickly makes his way to the house that Karen shares. He puts on the earphones from his Walkman and strides across a pedestrian bridge singing along with the  opera music he is listening to not hearing the foot steps behind him that will change his life forever. He is struck from behind and mutilated by the very instrument of his own trade.




 Another music lover Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick who favors jazz and has named his four cats after jazz greats, Miles, Dizzy, Bud and Pepper is also finishing up a long day and rescuing rescuing people at a center from an axe wielding drunk who used to be a well known jazz player. He will be called in in on the Fletcher case which will be only the first in a series of brutal assaults on hospital  personnel which involve people from all levels of the staff. 

It's autumn in the midlands and Resnick's staff is busy with other assorted investigations as well as their personal troubles, but Resnick keeps his troops well in hand. This is the third book in this series and the reader is getting very familiar with the characters and it like dropping in for a welcome visit. Graham Millington and Diptak Patel were working on a robbery ring, Mark Divine had a personality that is a major stumbling block, Lynn Kellogg is a very promising young officer with a lot to offer, Kevin Naylor's wife is sufering from  post natal depression, and is making every one's life a misery because Kevin transmits his blues like the flu.

Resnick has personal problems of his own. He was once married but his wife left him for a prosperous real estate agent. He has made a life for himself staving off loneliness with his music and some rare nights out at the local polish club, and warding off hunger with the erection of of the most marvelous sandwiches which  rival those of Dagwood. But he had been receiving some mail from his wife that he has been destroying without reading it because he fears it's destructive powers and now she has taken to calling him and he has managed to miss these calls as well. he is not certain that he is doing the right thing by avoiding his past. From every thing that Resnick can ascertain the seeds of the motive behind the viscious attacks on the medical staff must arise from something that happened in the past as well. The connections between the victims are very obscure.

John Harvey is masterful in creating that atmosphere and sense of place that is so realistic yet humane that you can read one book after another and really get to appreciate all the characters with all their foibles, weak and strong that makes them individuals that you would find anywhere. The Bloody Brits Editions are of s high quality that the act of holding the book is part of the pleasure of reading this book. This is my second reading of this series, not my last I am sure.