Workmanlike police procedural with an unconvincing plot, a cast of stereotypes and unimaginative, bland prose.
Although Murder Mile is the fourth novel in the Jane Tennison prequels series and Lynda La Plante’s twenty-seventh full length novel, I am ashamed to admit that it is my very first experience with reading her work despite being a long-time crime fiction fan. Given La Plante’s extensive back catalogue and legendary reputation I came to the book with high expectations and so it is fair to say that I was more than a little underwhelmed by this offering.
Murder Mile picks up Jane Tennison’s story in February 1979 after her recent promotion to sergeant and her transfer to the busy station of Peckham, South London and one of the most deprived areas of London with a reputation for violent crime and muggings. Nearing the end of a week of night shifts, WDS Jane Tennison and her partner are called to attend to an unconscious woman that a local market trader has struggled to rouse. Passing alongside a festering pile of bin bags twenty foot long, Jane quickly discovers that the woman, in her late twenties, has in fact been strangled and possibly sexually assaulted. Although the lack of abrasive injuries to the woman’s prone corpse indicate that she was murdered elsewhere and dumped in the alley later, missing persons reports and fingerprinting fail to shed light on the woman’s identity and Jane’s bad-tempered new boss, DCI Nick Moran, vents his fury. House-to-house enquiries in the neighbouring streets eventually leads to a second female victim, mid-sixties Sybil Hastings, being discovered in the locked boot of a top of the range and seemingly abandoned car. Despite the two females vastly different ages and the differing modus operandi of the killer with the second victim frenziedly stabbed, nobody in Peckham CID thinks that the proximity of the bodies is a coincidence, especially given they were murdered during the same time frame.
As the team struggle to link the two victims and the media vociferously attack the police for their lack of progress the area is quickly dubbed ‘Murder Mile” by the tabloids. With the team under immense pressure to not only apprehend the culprit but to ensure that no more women fall prey to a depraved killer, tempers soon fray. Yet before the week is out a third body is discovered and Jane’s suggestion that the team continue investigating every aspect of the victim’s lives in search of a connection falls on the deaf ears of her sexist and blinkered colleagues and superiors. When Jane turns up some unlikely discoveries, DCI Moran is eventually forced to consider her theories and hard evidence as Peckham’s new female sergeant’s persistent probing manages to incite the wrath of a killer whose sights soon hone in on her..
Aside from the characterisation of the young WDS Jane Tennison who is still finding her feet as a detective sergeant and a much more naive and uncertain figure than her steely later day TV version, the characterisation falls back on stereotypical and simplistic. All of the characters except Jane and her forensic colleague DS Paul Lawrence lack nuance but thankfully La Plante fleshes out Jane in a superior manner and conveys her apprehension at making mistakes and how she lambasts herself when she recognises her errors. Clearly tenacious, Jane appreciates how much she still has to learn and although admirably eager she is undoubtedly guilty of making impulsive leaps of logic without sufficient evidence and not always informing the wider team of the results of her enquiries, only to be shot down by her superiors when she voices her opinion. The rest of her colleagues are a slew of one-dimensional and bigoted caricatures who fall back on out-dated jokes and subscribe to theory that being homosexual goes hand in hand with being a child abuser. Clearly this is supposed to illustrate how broad-minded Jane Tennison is but it feels contrived and La Plante fails to offer an understanding of the emotions or what makes Jane tick. The insight into Jane’s private life (or lack of!) and her dedication to her career is made evident and together with the pressure of her overbearing but well-intentioned mother urging her to put her family before the needs of the police force she cuts a lonely figure putting in arduous hours.
Workmanlike and uninspired at best, the plot is utterly unconvincing and relies on the most unlikely series of circumstance with the prose unimaginative and bland. In terms of continuity the plot reads like a series of set pieces ready made for filming and feels like it has been written with one eye on a screen adaptation. More to the point, these set pieces feel carved out to showcase Jane’s strengths, attributes, integrity and admirable zeal. The style of writing and use of language is rather basic to the point of reading like a series of factual occurrences and mundane descriptions which do nothing to ignite the reader’s imagination. None of these factors are conducive to building and sustaining tension or suspense and the dialogue is clunky and does not ring true to the how people realistically express themselves.
I was disappointed at the lack of authentic era colour and aside from La Plante repeatedly mentioning that the bin men were on strike I never really felt got a sense of the political turbulence or public opinion during The Winter of Discontent. Apart from the obvious lack of mobile phones and computers and aside from a few innovative forensic techniques and the newly created victims support network the period detail is haphazard and I questioned its accuracy on numerous occasions. This is also true for the procedural detail and not having read Lynda La Plante’s work previously I was unable to tell if some of the amateur mistakes were simply due to being set in an era when detectives were less informed and more slapdash.
I was also totally unconvinced by the identity of the killer, the flaky motivation for a series of unlikely crimes and the elaborate attempt made at setting up a fall guy. Likewise the links between the three victims are peripheral at best and they are so tangentially connected that Murder Mile all feels rather far-fetched. Overall however this is a solid and fairly predictable read with the action and investigation continually moving along at a brisk pace but precious little subtlety to the actions of the police or the criminals. Whilst I would read another in the series I am in certainly in no rush to do so with it being towards the more basic end of the police procedural fiction market and certainly not a gripping read.
With thanks to Readers First who provided me with a free copy of this novel in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.
Murder Mile picks up Jane Tennison’s story in February 1979 after her recent promotion to sergeant and her transfer to the busy station of Peckham, South London and one of the most deprived areas of London with a reputation for violent crime and muggings. Nearing the end of a week of night shifts, WDS Jane Tennison and her partner are called to attend to an unconscious woman that a local market trader has struggled to rouse. Passing alongside a festering pile of bin bags twenty foot long, Jane quickly discovers that the woman, in her late twenties, has in fact been strangled and possibly sexually assaulted. Although the lack of abrasive injuries to the woman’s prone corpse indicate that she was murdered elsewhere and dumped in the alley later, missing persons reports and fingerprinting fail to shed light on the woman’s identity and Jane’s bad-tempered new boss, DCI Nick Moran, vents his fury. House-to-house enquiries in the neighbouring streets eventually leads to a second female victim, mid-sixties Sybil Hastings, being discovered in the locked boot of a top of the range and seemingly abandoned car. Despite the two females vastly different ages and the differing modus operandi of the killer with the second victim frenziedly stabbed, nobody in Peckham CID thinks that the proximity of the bodies is a coincidence, especially given they were murdered during the same time frame.
As the team struggle to link the two victims and the media vociferously attack the police for their lack of progress the area is quickly dubbed ‘Murder Mile” by the tabloids. With the team under immense pressure to not only apprehend the culprit but to ensure that no more women fall prey to a depraved killer, tempers soon fray. Yet before the week is out a third body is discovered and Jane’s suggestion that the team continue investigating every aspect of the victim’s lives in search of a connection falls on the deaf ears of her sexist and blinkered colleagues and superiors. When Jane turns up some unlikely discoveries, DCI Moran is eventually forced to consider her theories and hard evidence as Peckham’s new female sergeant’s persistent probing manages to incite the wrath of a killer whose sights soon hone in on her..
Aside from the characterisation of the young WDS Jane Tennison who is still finding her feet as a detective sergeant and a much more naive and uncertain figure than her steely later day TV version, the characterisation falls back on stereotypical and simplistic. All of the characters except Jane and her forensic colleague DS Paul Lawrence lack nuance but thankfully La Plante fleshes out Jane in a superior manner and conveys her apprehension at making mistakes and how she lambasts herself when she recognises her errors. Clearly tenacious, Jane appreciates how much she still has to learn and although admirably eager she is undoubtedly guilty of making impulsive leaps of logic without sufficient evidence and not always informing the wider team of the results of her enquiries, only to be shot down by her superiors when she voices her opinion. The rest of her colleagues are a slew of one-dimensional and bigoted caricatures who fall back on out-dated jokes and subscribe to theory that being homosexual goes hand in hand with being a child abuser. Clearly this is supposed to illustrate how broad-minded Jane Tennison is but it feels contrived and La Plante fails to offer an understanding of the emotions or what makes Jane tick. The insight into Jane’s private life (or lack of!) and her dedication to her career is made evident and together with the pressure of her overbearing but well-intentioned mother urging her to put her family before the needs of the police force she cuts a lonely figure putting in arduous hours.
Workmanlike and uninspired at best, the plot is utterly unconvincing and relies on the most unlikely series of circumstance with the prose unimaginative and bland. In terms of continuity the plot reads like a series of set pieces ready made for filming and feels like it has been written with one eye on a screen adaptation. More to the point, these set pieces feel carved out to showcase Jane’s strengths, attributes, integrity and admirable zeal. The style of writing and use of language is rather basic to the point of reading like a series of factual occurrences and mundane descriptions which do nothing to ignite the reader’s imagination. None of these factors are conducive to building and sustaining tension or suspense and the dialogue is clunky and does not ring true to the how people realistically express themselves.
I was disappointed at the lack of authentic era colour and aside from La Plante repeatedly mentioning that the bin men were on strike I never really felt got a sense of the political turbulence or public opinion during The Winter of Discontent. Apart from the obvious lack of mobile phones and computers and aside from a few innovative forensic techniques and the newly created victims support network the period detail is haphazard and I questioned its accuracy on numerous occasions. This is also true for the procedural detail and not having read Lynda La Plante’s work previously I was unable to tell if some of the amateur mistakes were simply due to being set in an era when detectives were less informed and more slapdash.
I was also totally unconvinced by the identity of the killer, the flaky motivation for a series of unlikely crimes and the elaborate attempt made at setting up a fall guy. Likewise the links between the three victims are peripheral at best and they are so tangentially connected that Murder Mile all feels rather far-fetched. Overall however this is a solid and fairly predictable read with the action and investigation continually moving along at a brisk pace but precious little subtlety to the actions of the police or the criminals. Whilst I would read another in the series I am in certainly in no rush to do so with it being towards the more basic end of the police procedural fiction market and certainly not a gripping read.
With thanks to Readers First who provided me with a free copy of this novel in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.