A new crime thriller from the prolific John Harvey, creator of the popular Charlie Resnik mysteries (Lonely Hearts), is always a cause for celebration.
The title of Good Bait comes from a popular Tadd Dameron jazz piece that is played in two distinct keys, just as this novel's two stories play out in opposition to each other. Detective Chief Inspector Karen Shields, who appeared in Harvey's Cold in Hand, is called in one "frozen December morning" to investigate the death of a young Moldovan teenager whose body is found in an icy pond near London. A young officer who has experienced sexism and racism in her career, Shields is proud of her position and aggressively pursues the case no matter where it takes her.
Meanwhile, Detective Inspector Trevor Cordon, "stationed in the middle of nowhere" (Cornwall), is a worn-out, divorced loner, reading Trollope and eager to retire. His sluggishness is disrupted when a woman from his past asks for help to find her missing daughter. Cordon became a bit too close to the girl when she was a young troublemaker, so he now somehow feels obligated to "save" her from something. With the help of private investigator Jack Kiley (another returning Harvey character), he undertakes the search. Like two live wires that never join, sparks abound as Harvey slowly unfolds his dark tales about a vast, nasty Eastern European underworld that has infested the city of London and the British countryside. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher