Embracing Skeletons Book

What if the worst things you can imagine were true? Peter Turnbull's gritty police procedural thrillers stretch the formula to its limits. His honest, hard-working coppers increasingly find themselves in situations as fresh as headlines and as hard to live with. York CID--a group of young detectives with problems of their own; knowledgeable older hands; a pig-keeping pathologist on the brink of burning out--find themselves dealing with the unthinkable. A child has been found burning on the moors, with a stomach full of excrement and insects and all the stigmata of Satanic abuse; children from an incestuous problem family are horribly knowing. A schizophrenic woman, and the local witches, are certain that they know what is going on, but the police know they have also to prove it. This is a powerful and upsetting thriller. Turnbull expertly depicts the technicalities of autopsy and other forensic procedures, but he knows that police work is about more than these. He is good on the legwork, the interviews, the process of persuading witnesses to tell everything they know and remember what they have forgotten; he is also good on the guilt policemen feel every time they fail to protect someone. --Roz KaveneyRead More