Former cop Frank Elder is drawn out of retirement when his ex-wife asks him to look into the disappearance of her friend Jennie’s sister Claire in Nottingham. Elder reluctantly returns to the city where his family disintegrated.

Elder uncovers sexual secrets of Claire’s that take Jennie by surprise. But when Claire is found dead at home—unmarked and carefully dressed—it is Elder who is surprised by the similarities to an old case. To solve this riddle, Elder will have to repartner with Detective Inspector Maureen Prior and delve into several suspects’ traumatic histories.

In a case in which neither memories, confessions, nor instincts can be trusted, Elder struggles with the weight of the past and Harvey delivers another psychologically trenchant page-turner.

Darkness & Light

A Frank Elder Mystery

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By John Harvey

Harvest Books

Copyright © 2007 John Harvey
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780156031417

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Chapter One

1

1965

Behind his spectacles, the boy's eyes were like bevelled glass.

Alice Silverman turned in her chair and adjusted the window blind so that the late summer light fell muted into the room. All of the surfaces — the pale wood table, the backs and arms of both chairs, the long low cabinet of shallow drawers — hummed with a shimmer of honeyed dust. Each drawer in the cabinet was marked clearly with the name of the child to whom it belonged; some, those of the youngest, had an animal brightly painted beside the handle, a dolphin, a diplodocus, a brown bear with outsize feet and a big red bow at its neck.

Close to Alice's slim wrist rested the unlined pad in which, occasionally, she noted down words or phrases in a neat hand, or otherwise doodled, cross-hatching dark corners which might be clouds or trees. Between herself and the boy there were sheets of unmarked paper, some coloured, some plain, and near them a wooden box filled with pencils, chalks and crayons.

'There's plenty of paper here,' Alice said. 'You could draw something. Make me a picture.'

Barely a flicker of response in those eyes.

'It's difficult, isn't it?' Alice said. 'Part of you wants to, but part of you doesn't.'

Still nothing.

She had asked him before, not asked him, chivvied him, told him. Needing a response. Something she could push against. Not wanting him to be too comfortable. None of those nambypamby social-worker questions — What had he done in the holidays? What was his favourite group, the Beatles or the Stones?

Alice looked at him and the boy shuffled awkwardly on his chair until he was sitting almost sideways, head down, face angled away.

The Stones, she thought, it had to be. For her, at least.The words to 'Mother's Little Helper' running through her head. The thrust of Jagger's skinny hips, cruel lewdness of his lips.

A shiver ran through her and she sensed the boy stiffen as if somehow he had noticed.

The referral had come from the boy's teacher initially, not based on any one particular thing, more an accumulation of incidents that had alerted her to some underlying malaise that went beyond the norm. Sudden mood swings, outbursts of temper, tears; several occasions on which he'd soiled himself in the playground or, once, in class; an incident, quite possibly misinterpreted, between himself and the school secretary when they had been alone in her office, something vaguely sexual.

Alice had read the reports, hummed and hawed, finally found a place in her schedule. Almost five years now since she had finished her training, three since taking up her post with this authority. The younger children, seven, eight, nine, she felt less anxious with, more in control. Boys like this though, edging eleven, slightly built but with something threatening about them nevertheless, something confrontational beating just beneath the skin . . .

Sensing the allotted time drawing to a close, Alice allowed herself to glance down at her watch; capped and uncapped her pen, then told herself not to fidget. A cup of tea and a biscuit: two more sessions and then she was through. Another day.Tonight there was a Buñuel at the Film Society. Viridiana. Maybe she'd go along, take her mind off work, relax.

'All right then,' Alice said, as brightly as she could. 'I'll see you again next week.'


From the Hardcover edition.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Darkness & Light by John Harvey Copyright © 2007 by John Harvey. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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JOHN HARVEY is the author of ten Charlie Resnick novels. His novels featuring Frank Elder include Flesh & Blood, which won the Silver Dagger Award and a Barry Award, and Ash & Bone, which was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Award. Harvey lives in Great Britain.