Ok, first off a confession. This whole "domestic
noir" thing, Gone Girl, Girl On a Train, etc, etc, doesn't really do it
for me. Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against it, even enjoyed the Gone
Girl film, but it doesn't really float my boat. To be fair I'm probably not the
target demographic. At risk of being presumptive, I imagine the genre is
targeted at a female audience. That said, I did enjoy the film of Gone Girl (as
already said) and domestic noir is the hottest thing in crime fiction at the
moment, so I thought I should really give such a book a go.
So along came Missing, Presumed on Netgalley. I put in my
request, received the book for review, and here we are. Missing, Presumed tells
the story of Edith Hind, a Cambridge student from an affluent, upper class
family, who goes missing one frozen, winter night. Cambridge police are called
in by her boyfriend who finds her front door open, blood in her kitchen, and
possible signs of a struggle. The story follows the investigation and the wider
milieu of Edith's friends and family as they cope with her disappearance. Chapters alternate from different character's
perspective, so we get the story from DS Manon Bradshaw (one of the cops) from
Edith's mother, her best friend, etc.
This is a slow burner of a book, don't expect fast paced
action or plot development. Many of the characters are a little odd, so we get
a lot about Manon Bradshaw's internet dating, her loneliness, her trouble with
men and the gulf that exists between her and her family. While Manon is the
closest we come to a main character, much time is also spent with her friend
Helena and her mother Miriam.
Putting aside that domestic noir isn't really my bag,
there are some criticisms I have that I feel are relevant. To my mind Missing,
Presumed spends too long with too many characters. In all there are chapters
told from no less than seven different characters’ perspective. While Manon
takes centre stage, in that more chapters are told from her point of view than
anyone else's, the number of other characters we spend time with felt like too
much. The constant chopping and changing perspective made it difficult for me
to warm to any one character and I never felt really felt engaged by any of
them.
More galling to me was the mistakes the author made
regarding the police. This wouldn't normally bother me, in fact I think some
writers try too hard at accuracy with regards to police procedure, filling
their pages with turgid description upon turgid description of protocol. But in
the acknowledgments at the back of the book she names not one, but three
serving Cambridgeshire police officers as having assisted her. She also
mentions that she was given a tour of Cambridgeshire's Major Crime Unit. If
you're going to boast of such access, you better get it right.
So what does the author get wrong? First off, early in the
book she refers to a WPC. Female police officers haven't been WPCs in years,
they're now PCs like their male counterparts. This is an especially galling
error for a female author to make. But worse is her prose concerning early
interviews conducted by the police with Edith's boyfriend and some of the other
witnesses. Quite frankly they're what PACE (the Police and Criminal Evidence
Act, the law which governs such things) terms "oppressive". In other
words, the author has her police question these people aggressively. A little
disclaimer, I have friends in the police, two serving officers and one
ex-officer. I've had exhaustive conversations with them about how these things
are done, and despite what is shown on the telly, British cops at least don't
do aggressive interviewing. This is not a naïve point about British cops being
‘better than that’ or more ‘civilised’, it's just a fact. The scandals of
miscarriages of justice of the past have forced their hand and PACE explicitly
bans it. Of equal importance is that such tactics are just not as effective.
What works, what the British police now do instead, is calmly draw the
interviewee's story out, testing it all the while for inconsistencies. Don't
believe me? Just watch footage released by the police of interviews with any
famous convicted murderer. You can find such footage of interviews with Steve
Wright, the Ipswich Strangler on Youtube. Even when they have the suspect bang
to right, they never interview like the author describes in this book, they
never get aggressive. They methodically trap the suspect in his lies, asking
the same question repeatedly in different ways, prising open the gaps in their
narrative. As I say, this wouldn't bother me in most novels, it's fiction after
all. But if you are going to boast of your access in the acknowledgements then
you're creating a hostage to fortune with any mistakes.
Having said all that, Missing, Presumed isn't a bad book.
It's not a page turner exactly, but it's ok, it kept my interest. Would I
recommend it? Putting aside my criticisms, if domestic noir is your thing then
this might well be up your street.
3 out of 5 stars
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