Still Waters - Hardcover

John Harvey's ninth book about British police investigator Charlie Resnick, who runs the homicide bureau in a city very much like Nottingham, doesn't immediately punch you in the stomach the way previous entries did. Instead, Still Waters offers several smaller stories ticking along at the same time. But the growing ranks of Resnick fans should find plenty to enjoy, including Charlie's delight in jazz and food (breakfasts supplant his legendary sandwich creations this time out). First-timers should certainly recognize the force and beauty of Resnick's gently sarcastic humanity as he pursues a friendly neighborhood art thief and tries to link the killing of an abused woman with a series of bodies found in local canals. Owl Books published Harvey's first two Resnick novels--Lonely Hearts and Rough Treatment--as well as 1996's stunning Easy Meat as handsome paperbacks.

It's that time of the year when crime-fiction readers everywhere jump at the chance to drop in on Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick and his fellow Midlands coppers as they sift through the remains of lives gone wrong. In Harvey's ninth Resnick novel, someone is dumping the abused bodies of young women in a city canal, and when one of the victims turns out to be a close friend of Charlie's lover, Hannah, the crimes take on a decidedly personal hue, bringing the issue of violence against women smack into Charlie and Hannah's own living room. As Charlie's team slogs ahead with the details of a difficult investigation, Charlie himself does what he does best--he broods, not just about the overwhelming sadness of the world as he finds it, but also about the fundamental ugliness that lies at the core of most of his work as a cop: "People having power over one another. Using them. Submission. Hurt." To find that ugliness on vivid display in a crime novel is not out of the ordinary, of course, but what has always made the Resnick novels different is Charlie's ability to locate the humanity within the squalor, personal as well as societal, and to struggle mightily, though often unsuccessfully, at keeping those sparks of human feeling alive. The struggle continues here, and Resnick's combination of doggedness and vulnerability continues to draw readers to his side. This latest installment breaks no new ground in the series, but it tills the familiar soil with the same careful, caring hand. Bill Ott