First Line: Beyond the window, I can see three kites hanging in the air over Bute Park.

The crime scene is a sad one: a woman killed after a short life ruined by drugs and prostitution... and her small six-year-old daughter lying dead beside her. The only thing that marks this crime scene as unusual is one small piece of evidence. Why would a drug addicted prostitute have the debit card of a very wealthy man who's been dead for months?

Police headquarters in Cardiff, Wales, has more important cases to focus on, but there's one person who can't let this one go: young Detective Constable Fiona Griffiths, who's got a reputation for being odd. She can become intensely focused on certain aspects of an investigation, and she doesn't always pick up on social cues. And everyone has heard about that two-year gap in her past.... (Psst! She had a breakdown. Mind-- you never heard it from me!)

Even though she has to get called on the carpet by her superior officer and told that she must do as she's told (no ignoring bits of the investigation that bore her, no haring off on some wild idea that she's gotten), Fi Griffiths has all the hallmarks of a brilliant, intuitive investigator. Told to check out the dead man's credit card and nothing more, Fi rapidly heads off on her own investigation because she's positive that dead little six-year-old has something important to tell her.

From the very beginning, Fiona Griffiths grabbed my attention and my sympathy. Throughout most of the book, her mental state is dealt with mostly by hints and innuendo, but the deeper she dives into this investigation, the more obvious it is that something is very wrong with her. From her flashes of insight and her way of putting clues together, to the way she counts the backwards and forwards "if's" in her name, to the way she tries to begin a relationship with a fellow officer, Fiona is an endearing-- and sometimes maddening-- creature.

She tries so hard to come down to Planet Normal-- to know when to laugh and how to smile at the right times-- that I couldn't help but want to get to know her and help her. So many times throughout the book, Fiona's thoughts would sing across the page and make me smile in recognition... or make my heart break. This is one incredibly memorable character, and I have to know more about her.

The fact that she's involved in a complex and dangerous investigation doesn't hurt one bit either. I couldn't put the pieces of it together and had to rely on Fiona's intuition to get us through. On his website the author states that he's working on more books in the series, and that is very welcome news. One thing that I would hope for in the future is that Fiona learns a bit of caution. The way she plows ahead into danger without waiting for backup-- although it fit the situation-- would mean that she would have a short life expectancy in the real world. Since she's a compelling character who's grabbed my interest in both hands, I want her to live for a good, long time.

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First off Fiona Griffiths finds a young woman undone by drugs and prostitution, her six-year-old daughter dead alongside her. Then she finds the platinum credit card of a very wealthy--and long dead--steel tycoon. What is a heroin-addicted hooker doing with the credit card of a well-known and powerful man who died months ago? Fiona Griffiths is a bit odd and suffers from Cotard's Syndrome, which is a condition of depression and psychosis. She is immediately drawn to the crime scene, and to the tragic face of the six-year-old girl, who she is certain has something to tell her . . . something that will break the case wide open. When she uncovers another dead prostitute, Fiona knows that she's only begun to scratch the surface of a dark world of crime and murder.
This book is an excellent start to a new series. It has a clever plot with original characters that starts out slowly but develops into an intense drama. I am going to investigate the rest of the series and I'm happy to find a new series to read.

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Well written, and very readable. And completely implausible, and ultimately very dubious morally.

I loved DC Fiona Griffiths' voice. In the first two-thirds of this novel, I admired Bingham's witty depiction of a troubled, but intelligent and deeply self-aware young woman, who is battling to maintain a facade of normality, and confronting her own demons with graveyard humor (the "graveyard" part becoming more and more apt, the more you learn about her ...) Loving the voice, and the character, allowed me to suspend my disbelief that a young woman -- however personable, however intelligent and however skilled at playing the part of fully "paid up citizen of Planet Normal" -- would have been accepted as a police officer, and that she would have survived the job for five minutes. That's ok: some of our best-beloved fictional detectives are the most crazy and the least plausible, and if we readers end their stories feeling that these weirdos are the only thing holding the darkness at bay, then that's ok, isn't it?

Until it isn't. In the final third of the novel, Griffiths' pathology takes over completely, and her actions take on a fantasy wish-fulfilment quality -- if only the police could act like that, the bad guys wouldn't stand a chance! What we need are a few more psychos, like our Young Fi, packing heat, ignoring orders, telling lies to her superiors ...

The authors whose reputations are based on detectives who are the Mayors of Crazytown, and who regularly Go Rogue in pursuit of justice, are clever enough to make it clear that freedom to ignore the rules comes at a price. Sherlock Homes must self-medicate with cocaine, the violin, and lashings of Mrs. Hudson's tea, just to cling by his fingertips to human society. Hercule Poirot is an obsessive-compulsive bundle of quirks ...

But we're supposed to believe that Fiona Griffiths can go postal on us, and walk away with her job, a boyfriend, supportive superiors and loving (if slightly mysterious) family ... I didn't believe it for a minute.

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