Harry Bingham

The Dead House by Harry Bingham is the 5th entry in his Fiona Griffiths series of police procedurals. As always this author respects his audience’s intelligence and keeps us guessing along with Fiona as she works through the case.

A young woman’s body has been found at a rural monastery but Fiona’s tenacity and her obsession with the corpse leads to the discovery that this young woman was kidnapped for ransom. The investigation eventually discovers that there is an organization that kidnaps family members of wealthy East Europeans. It also connects with the disappearance of a local teenage girl a number of years ago. Fiona has an unusual psychological condition that causes her to engage with people in a unique way. She sees things differently from others and this strange perspective paired with her intelligence often enables her to put the pieces of the puzzle together before others do.

The Dead House is a great addition to this series. The writing is clever, insightful and infused with plenty of humour. Fiona and her immediate supervisor on this case, DI Alun Burnett make a great team and I would love to see them together again in the next book. I was fascinated by this story and look forward to spending a little more time with Fiona in the future.… (more)