Review: Turnstone

Turnstone, Graham Hurley[“Turnstone” by Graham Hurley (published by Orion 2010). The first in a series featuring Joe Farraday, a Detective Inspector working in Portsmouth.]

The RSPB describes the Turnstone as “smaller than a redshank, turnstones have a mottled appearance with brown or chestnut and black upper parts and brown and white or black and white head pattern, whilst their under parts are white and legs orange. They spend most of their time creeping and fluttering over rocks, picking out food from under stones.”

I have no idea about underparts of our hero, but creeping and picking out food from under stones could describe Detective Joe Faraday. (Not Joe Friday of Dragnet... but part of this novel involves the sailing race round the Fastnet rock off the south coast of Ireland so maybe it should be Joe Faraday of Fastnet?)

This book is described as a police procedural novel, not a term I had heard, so here is the Wiki...

“The police procedural, or police crime drama, is a sub-genre of detective fiction which attempts to convincingly depict the activities of a police force as they investigate crimes. While traditional detective novels usually concentrate on a single crime, police procedurals frequently depict investigations into several unrelated crimes in a single story. While traditional mysteries usually adhere to the convention of having the criminal's identity concealed until the climax (the so-called whodunit), in police procedurals, the perpetrator's identity is often known to the audience from the outset (the inverted detective story). Police procedurals depict a number of police-related topics such as forensics, autopsies, the gathering of evidence, the use of search warrants, and interrogation.”

The roots of the police procedural have been traced to at least the mid-1880s. Wilkie Collins's novel The Moonstone (1868), a tale of a Scotland Yard detective investigating the theft of a valuable diamond, has been described as perhaps the earliest clear example of the genre.

This “review” might not be much on literary critique but at least it is educational...maybe.

It seems to be required that detectives in modern crime novels have to have a personal flaw, and Joe’s is the loss of his wife to cancer and his relationship with his deaf son who is about to leave home. His solace is watching birds and in particular the Turnstones near his house on Hayling Island. The rest of the story is set in Portsmouth with some guest appearances by the Isle of Wight.

To clear his mind, which is being rotted by paperwork and procedures, he goes back to what he thinks he does best and leaves his desk work and takes on some of the cases his hard-pressed staff don't have time for.

One case that takes his fancy is of a man reported missing by his 8 year old daughter (we never hear about this girl again!). Faraday doggedly works on the trail of the missing man, who was a keen yachtsman and had planned to sail on that famous Fastnet race, which can run into severe storms. In this case some of the crew were drowned and the boat capsizes. But the missing man wasn't on board. So... where is he?

Another cop on the case is Paul Winter, who is out to gain any information he can, and doesn't care what happens to the informants. Not so much facts but confessions (more like Colombo here). There are cameos of some female police officers who are also on the scene, being human. Nobody else has any of those black pasts.

Many sides of Portsmouth, are shown. I don't know how accurate they are. Some of our readers think the picture painted is too black.

GH tries to make the story as procedurally authentic as possible. I paraphrase some of his own comments.

He describes an "extraordinary police culture", "People who are embattled”, “They are by nature incredibly suspicious of more or less everyone. They're suspicious of their own bosses; they're often suspicious of their workmates and their wives." “Hampered by yet another crime bill that has consequences in the squad room”…….

They have to placate all strata of society and the juxtaposition of Paulsgrove and Port Solent make for tensions that are explored, both social and financial.

In police work there is the soft cop/hard cop and GH paired his hero with an opposite number, someone "far less reflective, much more instinctive". Hence the ruthless, maverick DC Paul Winter, “a man with scant regard for the rulebook”.

Hurley himself says of Winter “He steps between the right and wrong sides of the law” and "The best thief-takers could have made equally blinding careers as quality criminals. You need focus. You need cunning. You need to dream up all kinds of ways of getting people into the deepest shit."

So we have Faraday looking for the evidence, Winter looking for “intelligence”. But they have not got the evidence. They will not get a conviction, so they arrange for the murderer to get his comeuppance another way. Justice is done..... or is it?

Does the end justifies the mean? Injustices can happen. An idea can become the truth. All the available time being used to find anything that might reinforce the first thought, regardless of the truth. All that counts is the conviction that will look good in the paperwork.

We are seduced by books like this to believe that the police force will see justice done and that the law can get in the way of them doing their job. But remember, if they wish, it might be you that they are out to get....... My lawyer tells me to say nothing more!

I read this book in a very short time, but it was not a hardship. I wanted to know the next part of the puzzle. If you like this genre, then you will like this book, probably.

Take it on holiday, a few pages to read at the pool now and then, but I don't think you would bother to bring it home.