Monday, March 05, 2018

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Other Countries by Jo Bannister

Jo Bannister is a prolific Irish crime fiction writer. She has released nearly three dozen books since 1984, creating six stand-alone novels and six different sets of series characters. Her latest is Other Countries (Severn House, 2017), the fourth in the Gabriel Ash and Hazel Best series set in the fictional small town of Norbold, outside Birmingham, England.

Hazel Best is a former teacher who joined the police force after a few years in the classroom and is still considered a new recruit. She has already established herself, however, as a lightning rod for trouble. At the beginning of this book she is returning to work from medical leave, needed because of injuries incurred only weeks after she started work as a constable. The new police supervisor thinks sending her to guard a celebrity who is in town to open a museum is a safe job that will ease her back into full-time duty but of course it is not.  A young man from Turkey has tracked down the celebrity with the intent of killing him. Hazel steps into the path of the improvised bomb and awakes in the hospital.

In the meantime her friend Gabriel Ash, who is recovering from a mental breakdown, is becoming accustomed to caring for his sons who have recently come to live with him. The daily routines of getting them fed and off to school each day are overwhelming, and he lives in fear of Social Services taking them away. He is so deeply absorbed in all these new activities he doesn’t realize that Hazel’s brief post-hospital holiday has gone on for nearly two weeks. When he does, he and Hazel’s lodger find no one, including her family, knows where she is and they begin to look for her.

This book is not what I expected when I pulled it off the New Mysteries shelf at the library. I was halfway through when I realized I had no idea where it was going. It is not a police procedural and there is no murder. There are multiple crimes, however, within a story of friendship and loyalty. It also shows in a frighteningly realistic scenario how an intelligent, capable person can be slowly drawn into a life-threatening situation.

It is not necessary to read the earlier books in the series to understand this one. I picked up the basics from the bits of background carefully woven into this absorbing tale, which I read in one sitting, staying up late in order to finish. Highly recommended as a riveting, unusual piece of crime fiction.


Aubrey Hamilton © 2018
 
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal IT projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

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