A Novel
by Harry Bingham
She knows what it's like ...
At first, the murder scene appears sad, but not unusual: a young woman undone by drugs and prostitution, her six-year-old daughter dead alongside her. But then detectives find a strange piece of evidence in the squalid house: the platinum credit card of a very wealthy - and long dead - steel tycoon. What is a heroin-addicted hooker doing with the credit card of a well-known and powerful man who died months ago? This is the question that the most junior member of the investigative team, Detective Constable Fiona Griffiths, is assigned to answer.
But D.C. Griffiths is no ordinary cop. She's earned a reputation at police headquarters in Cardiff, Wales, for being odd, for not picking up on social cues, for being a little over-intense. And there's that gap in her past, the two-year hiatus that everyone assumes was a breakdown. But Fiona is a crack investigator, quick and intuitive. She is immediately drawn to the crime scene, and to the tragic face of the six-year-old girl, who she is certain has something to tell her ... something that will break the case wide open.
Ignoring orders and protocol, Fiona begins to explore far beyond the rich man's credit card and into the secrets of her seaside city. And when she uncovers another dead prostitute, Fiona knows that she's only begun to scratch the surface of a dark world of crime and murder. But the deeper she digs, the more danger she risks - not just from criminals and killers but from her own past .... and the abyss that threatens to pull her back at any time.
"Starred Review. An insightful look at a damaged, unusual woman trying to fit in as well as a view of past and present Wales enhance the brisk, realistic plot. " - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. The promising first installment in a new series, this book is so good it has you wondering who should play Fiona on the big screen." - Kirkus
"Bingham has gotten inside the mind of his clever, neurotic heroine so well as to make her seem entirely credible... An interesting, unusual and in some ways even moving crime novel." - Literary Review
"Talking to the Dead is first and foremost the tale of a courageous, vulnerable, slightly crazy, but compassionate and intelligent young woman who is trying to succeed in a pedestrian and procedure-dominated organisation." - Crime Fiction Lover
This information about Talking to the Dead was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Harry Bingham is an author and literary consultant who runs the U.K.'s largest literary consultancy firm, The Writers' Workshop. He has been longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for the WH Smith Thumping Good Read Award for previous titles available in the U.K. He resides in Oxfordshire, where he is at work on the next novel in the Fiona Griffiths series.
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