Cover Up

April 3, 2017
It’s July 1964 in Hall’s fascinating sixth mystery featuring photojournalist Kate O’Donnell and Det. Sgt. Harry Barnard (after 2016’s Deep Water). The Profumo affair is still bright in the minds of Londoners, Elvis’s Viva Las Vegas is playing in West End cinemas, and the Beatles are set to arrive in Liverpool for the first northern England screening of their new film, A Hard Day’s Night. Harry is handling the case of a woman whose body has been dumped in Soho Square. Meanwhile, Kate is off to her native Liverpool to photograph how the city has been rebuilt following the devastating bombings it sustained during WWII. How these two seemingly disparate story lines entwine makes for compulsive reading. Hall paints a masterly picture of the times that includes—in addition to screaming fans and miniskirts—casual sexism, horrific homophobia, a touch of police brutality, and the domineering hold of the Catholic church over its followers. Kate is a fully realized character dealing with her own personal demons, and Harry, her lover, is a man coming to terms with a modern, independent woman. They make an intriguing couple.

April 1, 2017
Photojournalist Kate O'Donnell and her boyfriend, DS Harry Barnard, find themselves facing off with the powers that be in their sixth case (Deep Waters, 2016, etc.).Liverpool may be rocking to the Beatles and the new Merseybeat, but the city still bears the scars of the Blitz. Kate, Liverpool-born and -raised, is based in London now, but Barnard's distraction by yet another murder and vice case makes her glad to go on an assignment to show how the hometown of the Fab Four has changed since the war. Kate's da, Frank, is an unreliable drunk, but he seems to have stumbled into steady work with a wartime brother in arms from the homefront, Terry Jordan, a local lad made good. But when scaffolding at his building site collapses, killing one of the men, Kate's family seems to collapse with it. Frank runs--whether from the police or his boss, no one knows--while Kate's brother Tom is dragged from the bed he shares with his boyfriend on an unspecified sodomy charge. The local chief of police and his goons beat Tom nearly to death for sport, and when Barnard makes inquiries he gets a taste of the same medicine. Kate and Barnard make it back to London only to find that the victim from Barnard's case ties back to the most powerful men in Liverpool. A gritty period piece with an intriguingly different, darker take on the swinging '60s.

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