Still Water

Still Water

(Resnick 9)

Summary

The battered body of a young woman is found floating in the still water of an inner-city canal. Police suspect a serial killer, which makes it a case for the newly formed Serious Crime Squad. Not DI Charlie Resnick’s case, then; not his worry.

But soon another body is found, and this time Charlie has a personal interest. His lover, Hannah, knew the murdered woman, knew too that her husband was fiercely jealous. And very free with his fists. Arguing that her friend was the victim of domestic abuse, not the target of some anonymous killer, Hannah persuades Charlie to take on the case.

Investigating the murder, Resnick runs head-on into deeply disturbing questions about the nature of love, about the relationship of abuser and abused, and about our complicity in our own destruction.

Reviews

  • A work of unusual excellence
    The Times

About the author

John Harvey

John Harvey was born in London, where he now lives, while considering Nottingham his spiritual home. Initially a teacher of English & Drama, he has been a full-time writer for more than forty years. The first of his 12 volume Charlie Resnick series, Lonely Hearts was selected by The Times as one of the '100 Best Crime Novels of the Century' and the first Frank Elder novel, Flesh & Blood, won the CWA Silver Dagger in 2004. He was awarded the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in the crime genre in 2007, and his story, 'Fedora' won the CWA Short Story Dagger in 2014.

In addition to writing fiction, he has written and published poetry, running Slow Dancer Press for over twenty years; his New & Selected Poems, Out of Silence was published in 2014. He has adapted the work of Arnold Bennett, A. S. Byatt, Graham Greene and others for radio and television, and in 2017, his dramatisation of the final Resnick novel, Darkness, Darkness, was produced at Nottingham Playhouse. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by the universities of Hertfordshire and Nottingham.
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