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    Cold in Hand
    Cold in Hand
    Cold in Hand
    Audiobook10 hours

    Cold in Hand

    Written by John Harvey

    Narrated by Nick Boulton

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Valentine's Day, and a dispute between rival gangs escalates into bloody violence. One teenage girl dead is left dead, another injured, and a police officer is
    caught in the crossfire. Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick, nearing retirement, is hauled back to the front line to help deal with the fallout. But when the
    dead girl's father seeks to lay the blame on DI Lynn Kellogg, his colleague and partner, Resnick finds the line between personal and professional dangerously
    blurred.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateDec 1, 2009
    ISBN9781407454184
    Author

    John Harvey

    John Harvey has been writing crime fiction for more than forty years. His first novel, Lonely Hearts, was selected by The Times as one of the '100 Best Crime Novels of the Century' and he has been the recipient of both the silver and diamond dagger awards.

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    Reviews for Cold in Hand

    4/5

    61 ratings7 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The ebb and flow. Was sad in parts but I felt the book had a great ending.
    • 4/5
      Cold in Hand by John Harvey is the 11th book in his Charlie Resnick series and some time has passed in the timing of the story. Charlie is getting ever closer to retirement age and is beginning to think and make plans for the event. He sees no great change as his life partner, Lynn Kellogg is quite a bit younger than him and still has her police career in front of her. Charlie and Lynn, who used to work together, now live together in a relationship that both are very happy in.The first half of the book deals with how Lynn, stepping between two fighting teens, comes into the line of a bullet. Luckily she was wearing her safety vest, but one of the girls dies from her wounds. While Lynn is sidelined and recovering, Charlie is asked to work this case and help find who the shooter was, and who was actually being targeted - Lynn or the teen girl. While this case is on-going Lynn returns to work and gets more deeply involved in another of her murder cases. This one concerns a massage worker who had her throat slit in a sleazy parlour. This case involves some very nasty characters, Serbians, who also are gun runners. Lynn’s top priority is to protect the witnesses in this case, but then the trial is postponed and the suspect is given bail on the direction of Stuart Daines of the Serious Organized Crime Agency who warns Lynn off and obviously wants these criminals on the street so his gun-running case will gain traction.As always, John Harvey excels in his gritty plotting. His eye for the details of police politics and his ability to deliver stories that seem to have come right from newspaper headlines bring a sense of reality to his police procedurals. In Cold in Hand, we also see Charlie at his lowest which helps to develop this well crafted character even further. I know the next book is the last in the series and I am both looking forward to the read and dreading the end of this favourite series.
    • 3/5
      would give 3.25 stars if I could.
    • 4/5
      So what makes a good police procedural: authentic police techniques, good characterization, multiple plot lines, but not so many that they seem irrelevant, a believable resolution.

      This, the 11th (?) Charlie Resnick meets all the criteria. You can read a summary of the plot in the publisher’s description. It’s accurate without giving away too much.

      This was my first Resnick novel; it will not be my last. There was a shocker about halfway through the book that took me completely by surprise. That surprise permitted Harvey to introduce a new character, Karen Shields, a black DCI who, I think, would make a marvelous new protagonist for a series. In this book she became my favorite. Resnick, almost retired, really takes second place to his live-in DI Lynn Kellogg and Karen. Events revolve around Kellogg and her investigation into a prostitution ring and a murder. Resnick becomes almost peripheral. I was astonished that in the other reviews I read, no one mentions Karen, because I thought she rapidly took center stage.

      This is not a cozy. The world Harvey paints is dark and violent and the police are part of that violence both as instigators and victims.
    • 4/5
      It used to be that one murder sufficed to create a good detective novel: then, we needed a second, half way through, to titillate the reader and now, we need the character who has a connection to our hero who must die. I don't want this emotional 'realism' in my whodunnits.Apart from this grouse, however, this is a cracking book: 480 pages flash by whilst anyone disturbing my reading got a sharp rebuff.The story is excellent: ranging from the senseless murder of a teenage girl on the street to a major arms gang - oh, and that is in addition to Resnick's de facto wife being gunned down. This is not a book which ever drags but, at the same time, the story hangs together and, as in all the best books, just when we think that we know who did what and to whom, the plot twists and we are left cursing the fact that, whilst all the clues were there, we missed them (again!)Oh well, I'll crack it next time... or the next, or.......
    • 4/5
      This is the second Resnick book that I have read (the other one was "Easy Meat") and I am now looking forward to reading more of them. It's easy for me to compare Resnick with Ian Rankin's Rebus, although the Rebus stories are marginally better than the Resnick ones. There's also a similarity with Peter Robinson's DCI Banks, those books are as good as the Resnick ones I have read.In this story, the surprize killing of Resnick's partner midway through the book was a shock. However, the hunt for her killer in the second part of the book picked up the pace, which was starting to drag. The female investigator brought into the case was a good addition and maybe we'll see more of her in future Resnick stories.I think that this book is a good introduction to Resnick and I hope that the past (and hopefully future) ones are as good.
    • 5/5
      Detective Inspector Lynn Kellogg is on her way home from a hostage negotiation when she sees a crowd of youths, many of them wearing hoodies, gathered in a rough circle that spreads out across the street. After quickly calling into Control to request backup, Lynn runs towards the crowd. She intervenes in a knife fight between two girls, and as she stops the fight, someone from retreating crowd fires two shots. The first shot strikes Lynn in the chest, and the second takes one of the girls in the neck. Because Lynn is still wearing her flak jacket from the earlier incident she is only bruised, but the girl dies.DI Lynn Kellogg is DI Charlie Resnick's live-in partner. Resnick is close to retirement. Despite a possible conflict of interest, Detective Superintendent Bill Berry chooses Resnick as his "bagman", second in command, in the investigation into the shooting. Feelings in the community are running high, especially as the dead girl's father is saying that Lynn used his daughter as a human shield.Lynn Kellogg has been heading another investigation: that of the murder of one of the girls in a sauna and massage parlour in one of the older and seedier streets of Nottingham. Most of the female workers and the owner are from Eastern Europe. One of the girls agrees to give evidence, but as the Nottingham police put their case together, it appears there may be connections with international gunrunning and people trafficking. SOCA - the Serious and Organised Crime Agency - takes an interest, and that's when things begin to go wrong.In retrospect, the thing that strikes you about DEAD IN HAND is how meticulously it is constructed. Although this is the 11th title in the Resnick series, it is the first for ten years. More recently Resnick has made cameo appearances in Harvey's Frank Elder series, mainly as mentor to Frank who has already retired. In the ten years that have elapsed since the publication of LAST RIGHTS (1998), a lot has happened in the life of Charlie Resnick, and so Harvey has almost a blank canvas to deal with. Whatever most of us knew about Charlie Resnick, assuming we followed the first ten books, we have forgotten, and so Harvey builds for us a broad canvas: not just the current cases that Charlie and Lynn are involved in, but the development of their relationship, and how Charlie is feeling about the prospect of retirement. Under the broad brush strokes are detailed scenarios, lending a sense of real authenticity. The interesting thing about Harvey's revival of Resnick is that firstly it is something for which his readers have been clamouring some time, but secondly you don't feel that you should have read the books in order.COLD IN HAND is divided into two parts, and at the very beginning of Part Two we meet a character whom I hope we see more of in the future: Detective Chief Inspector Karen Shields, six foot tall, unmistakeably of Jamaican background. She is an excellent example of Harvey's ability to show us the new face of policing in Britain, the perfect foil to Resnick who really represents what policing used to be. More than one policeman in COLD IN HAND is worried by what is happening on the city streets. The picture that Harvey creates is gloomy.John Harvey is a prolific writer. Before crime fiction he wrote both westerns and pulp fiction. Among his pseudonyms: Jon Barton, William S Brady (with Angus Wells), L J Coburn (with Laurence James), J B Dancer (with Angus Wells), John B Harvey, William M James (with Terry Harknett and Laurence James), Terry Lennox, John J McLaglen (with Laurence James), James Mann, Thom Ryder, J D Sandon (with Angus Wells).In 2004 Harvey won a Silver Dagger for Best Novel for FLESH AND BLOOD and in 2007 a Diamond Dagger 'lifetime achievement' award. In October 2008 he will be International Guest of Honor at Bouchercon 2008.