{"id":753,"date":"2012-09-28T16:16:30","date_gmt":"2012-09-28T22:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=753"},"modified":"2012-09-28T16:16:30","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T22:16:30","slug":"jane-casey-the-reckoning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/jane-casey-the-reckoning\/","title":{"rendered":"Jane Casey: The Reckoning"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/form>\n

Our book club recently read and enjoyed Jane Casey\u2019s first novel, The Burning, <\/em>prompting me to turn to her second, The Reckoning. <\/em>Casey\u2019s series is a British police procedural centered on Maeve Kerrigan, an ambitious, hard working, clueless-about-her-lovelife young woman who may remind readers of Helen Mirren\u2019s indelible Jane Tennison.\u00a0 Though Kerrigan is younger than Tennison, even all these years later, she\u2019s experiencing the some of the same kind of sexism and suspicion ladled on Tennison.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>While that is an aspect of the books, Casey\u2019s focus is mostly on the actual stories, which, if the first two books are anything to go by, are gripping.\u00a0 This novel centers on a string of gruesome murders of pedophiles, seemingly unconnected to each other either by method or by type of victim. Maeve feels she\u2019s been brought into the case by the brusque Josh Derwent as window dressing.\u00a0 He delegates the easy, no thought tasks to her, almost becoming angry when she shows initiative.\u00a0 Being Maeve, she does anyway and is able to put together some insights by working her way through the evidence.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Maeve is also trying to figure out a shaky relationship with fellow policeman Rob, one where she keeps holding him at arm\u2019s length for no good reason.\u00a0 This is the only area of her life where she got on my nerves.\u00a0 She\u2019s believably young and ambitious, has a very real relationship with her parents and her brother, but somehow the love life bit of it eludes her.\u00a0 It\u2019s frustrating to the reader because Rob is so obviously a nice guy.<\/p>\n

The three cases of the brutally murdered men appear too coincidental not to be linked, and then thrown into the mix is a missing teenage girl, complicating matters.\u00a0 The initial investigation was somewhat mishandled and Maeve\u2019s team takes over.\u00a0 The detail Casey supplies in each case is just enough, maintaining both suspense and psychological detail.<\/p>\n

While I compared this earlier to Prime Suspect, <\/em>with Casey\u2019s pretty straightforward storytelling and interesting central female character, she also reminds me a bit of one of my favorite writers, Lillian O\u2019Donnell.\u00a0 O\u2019Donnell\u2019s Norah Mulcahaney solved lots of cases with her smarts, despite the lack of faith in some of her co-workers.\u00a0 Like O\u2019Donnell, Casey is a wonderful storyteller.\u00a0 I\u2019m already looking forward to book three.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our book club recently read and enjoyed Jane Casey\u2019s first novel, The Burning, prompting me to turn to her second, The Reckoning. Casey\u2019s series is a British police procedural centered on Maeve Kerrigan, an ambitious, hard working, clueless-about-her-lovelife young woman who may remind readers of Helen Mirren\u2019s indelible Jane Tennison.\u00a0 Though Kerrigan is younger than … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6,8],"class_list":["post-753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-british","tag-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":755,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions\/755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}