The Last Voice You Hear

Herron's second installment in the Zoe Boehm series is a thoughtful, slow-paced story of police officers and the justice system gone bad. Zoe is a forty-something private detective who's hired to find the elusive boyfriend who made Caroline Daniels' final weeks happy. Ms. Daniels fell in front of an oncoming Tube train--or was she pushed? Two other mysteries are carefully braided into this first storyline; and together, they add up to a satisfying story of revenge and ultimate justice. Much of the story, at least the first half of the book, has very little mystery to it. It concerns Zoe's apathy and depression. Many authors in this genre disappoint by not offering some details about the main character/detective and what makes her/his mind work. Herron probably goes a little too far with Zoe's negativity and skepticism, and the pacing falls pretty flat for the first half of the novel. On the whole, however, it is a well written story with believable characters, motives, and conclusion. The Last Voice You Hear is a fine novel and makes the reader know Herron is an author we'd better keep an eye on.

I gather that in the US this is Mick Herron's first novel. That's fine, because the book stands proudly by itself as a psychological, noirish crime novel that deals in the issues of love, possession and ageing. Zoe Boehm his detective is a street-smart 40-something private eye based in Oxford, England. The plot kept me guessing and I guessed wrong most of the time. It is a slow-burner but the atmosphere more than compensates. If you are lucky enough to pick up on this novel, then I urge you to obtain on the net the real first novel written a year earlier, Down Cemetery Road. In it Zoe is dragged reluctantly into the private hell of another woman (Sarah Tucker) and together they have to deal with a crazily-mounting series of threats from the Secret Services. Apart from leaving you totally gripped (no lack of plot in this one, if anything it is a bit over-plotted) it will give you the background that formed the characters that we meet again, a few years on and scarred in their different ways, in The Last Voice You Hear. I have just finished Last Voice on vacation, and I want the next one now, please, Mr Herron..... If there is any justice this will in time become a classic TV detective series.