First published in Crime Scene #3.
SILENT WITNESS (SERIES 19)
(2entertain). 14 March 2016
It might come as a surprise to some that award-winning crime drama Silent Witness soon starts filming its 20th series, but this 19th run of 10 episodes – starring Emilia Fox, Richard Lintern and David Caves as a dedicated team of forensic pathologists – provides ample evidence why it remains fresh and relevant.
These five two-part stories cover a wide range of stories and issues. Opener After The Fall is a sharply delivered psychological thriller which puts Fox’s Nikki Alexander on the wrong side of the law, while Flight – about the murderous return to the UK of two young Jihadists – touches on the horrors of religious-motivated violence. Life Licence asks some difficult questions about the rehabilitation of prisoners in the community, while In Plain Sight is a twist-filled ‘whodunit’. Although not a season finale in the sense of tying up earlier storylines, River’s Edge is a surprisingly tense thriller in which Nikki and Jack Hodgson (David Caves) find themselves on the run and in genuine danger.
There’s no doubt that this series is stylishly directed: for example, Flight opens and closes with almost identical images, while the opening of River’s Edge shockingly contrasts the calm verdant beauty of the English countryside with violent murder by an unseen gunman.
Much of the success of Silent Witness is grounded in its ensemble cast, in which Liz Carr continues to shine even if she’s always “confined to base” in her powered wheelchair. Nevertheless, the series isn’t afraid to put these ongoing relationships to the test in ways that genuinely increase the dramatic tension.
Of course, an important attraction of the show remains the crime-solving process at its heart, and how even the smallest sample of brick-dust in a footprint can prove a vital clue in tracking down a murderer. Admittedly, the forensics and discovery of CTTV footage can occasionally feel just too plot-convenient, but the show is willing to show that such evidence isn’t always enough to warrant a prosecution.
For a series essentially hooked on murder, Silent Witness ironically proves it still has a lot of life.
Did You Know?
Emilia Fox insists she’s “hopeless with the sight of blood in real life”, but was fascinated by the genuine autopsy she attended before joining the series.
Now Watch…
Based on the novels by award-winning crime writer Ann Cleeves, Shetland successfully combines gripping plots with the rugged landscapes of Scotland’s most northerly islands.
NO MORTAL THING
By Gerald Seymour. (Hodder & Stoughton). Out now
Gerald Seymour’s thrillers always come with a journalistic sense of realism, and a succinct writing style that paints characters and locations with a real sense of immediacy and veracity. Here, Seymour’s focus turns to the little-written about ‘Ndrangheta, the immensely powerful mafia-like families in the Reggio Calabria region of southern Italy, which apparently control much of Europe’s cocaine trade.
So No Mortal Thing is remarkably educational, revealing how the ‘Ndrangheta’s influence reaches out from a small village on the foot of Italy to Germany and the rest of the continent – including the UK. Through the characters of elderly patriarch Bernardo, and his viciously self-assured grandson Marcantonio, Seymour chillingly shows us the viciousness underscoring their code of family honour. Through his principal character, the “innocent abroad” Jago Browne, he even shows that it’s still possible for an investment banker – albeit one from a sink estate and “deprived” background – to be one of the good guys.
Yet this is definitely a novel you have to read with care; within his large cast, Seymour’s point of view character changes frequently from scene to scene, and not always obviously. The result is something of a slow-burner in the Italian sun.
Did you know?
Both Seymour’s parents were writers; his father William Kean Seymour was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, his mother the novelist Rosalind Wade.
FOOL ME ONCE
By Harlan Coben. (Century). 23 March 2016
“They say you can’t bury the past. That was probably true, but what they really meant was that trauma ripples and echoes and somehow stays alive.” That’s what Maya Stern, central character in Harlan Coben’s Fool Me Once thinks, but it’s also a pretty good summary of the New Jersey-based author’s work, which frequently hinges on the present-day resurfacing of unresolved or misinterpreted events – usually violent.
Starting at a funeral, ending with a birth, Fool Me Once is a terse, no-nonsense page-turner with just enough of a domestic tone to soften its occasionally brutal edges. The driving narrative is Maya’s investigation into the shadier history of the very rich Burkett family into which she married, but the novel also touches on aspects of veterans returning to civilian life, the ethical complications of whistleblowing in the information age, and – above all – the importance and fallibility of trust.
Coben is perhaps guilty of stacking the odds in his favour by choosing to make his main protagonist a highly trained former special ops pilot, while his final twist feels – deliberately perhaps – something of a betrayal. No doubt, though; this is definitely a novel you’ll find difficult to put down.
Did you know?
Harlan Coben’s fans include former US President Bill Clinton, who was photographed holding a copy of No Second Chance while recovering from quadruple-bypass surgery.
First published in Crime Scene, #3.
