The Darkest Hour (Katherine Howell, Pan, $32.95 tpb, ISBN 9781405038324, May) *** 1/2

This is the second crime novel to feature detective Ella Marconi, following Frantic. Once again the author introduces the lives of paramedics and this I found fascinating, knowing little about the experiences of an ambulance officer. The author was herself an ambulance officer and it is a great idea to bring in characters from her former world—not something I can recall anyone else doing. That said, at first I found the character Lauren annoying but after the first few chapters I started to enjoy the suspense as I raced towards the ending. Paramedic Lauren Yates stumbles into a world of trouble—when she discovers a dead man in an inner city alley, for the killer lurks nearby. When the murderer threatens to make her life hell if
he informs the police, she believes him. He’s Miles Werner, her sister’s ex and father of Lauren’s niece. But when a victim tells her with his dying breath that Miles attacked him too, she finds herself with blood on her hands and Marconi on her back. The investigation moves along at a good pace as more of Werner’s victims appear and Marconi has to make the connections as well as keeping her eye on Lauren. The book would appeal more to women than men, partly because of
Lauren’s love problems, which I found irritating—but the suspense is good and I look forward to the next.

Peter Milne is a bookseller and co-editor of Abbey’s Crime Chronicle

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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