I have just read ‘The Calling of the Grave’ by Yorkshire author Simon Beckett. It features Dr David Hunter a forensic expert to equal Kay Scarpetta or Kathy Reichs’ Tempe Brennan.
Not up to the standard of Pat Baker’s W.H.R. Rivers, a real anthropologist, as his fictionalized self in Regeneration. Rivers treats shell-shocked soldiers so that can be sent back to the front in the brutal First World War.
Karen Rose’s forensic pathologist Lucy Trask is bit off this track so give this Yorkshire lad’s hero a chance.
Simon Beckett grew up and still lives in Sheffield. ‘I had a fairly ordinary working class background, at a time when the city was still dominated by the steel industry. I’ve lived in other places but always gravitated back here. It tends to get a lot of bad press, but it’s a good place to live, and a lot greener than most people give it credit for – I mean that in the sense of trees and countryside rather than the ecological sense. I don’t set my novels here, because I think it’s difficult to be objective about somewhere you know well. But other writers have no problem with that, so it’s just a case of different strokes, I suppose.’ www.simonbeckett.com
His other books: ‘Where there is smoke’ Written in Bone, Whispers of the Dead and The Chemistry Of Death are now on my list of books to read.
