The Faces of the Dead (A Cathy Marsden Thriller)
The second Sergeant Cathy Marsden Thriller begins in Leeds in March 1944. Crime doesn’t stop because there’s a war on, and Cathy has been seconded from Millgate police headquarters to the Special Investigation Branch (SIB) for the duration, because Leeds is her stomping ground. She knows every nook and cranny, back street and alley, along with retaining an enormous resource list of contacts. Cathy is enjoying a short leave with her fiancé, who is posted overseas, when she’s ordered back to work with the death of Eric Carr, a small-time hoodlum, and Nina Cordell, a known prostitute—both killed in a car crash—the boot crammed with stolen items from the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI) and a stash of guns, British issue but used by the Americans. Carr seems to have been on his way up.
This sets off a three-week hunt for the man now trying to insert himself as Leeds’ new crime boss. Several more deaths/executions occur before SIB gets a solid lead on a name, but the man is always one step ahead. Tension is high, the brass wants an arrest, talk of an inquiry circulates, leading supervisor Faulkner to fear he’ll be taking the fall for this failed mission. SIB is supposed to know what’s going on in the city, but its lines of communication have gone silent. Cathy pays a call on an old crime boss, Sol, who sits in the park feeding the birds, with his dog Wonder. Sol is a great addition to this twisty story, but the team is still batting zero.
The character list in Nickson’s second excursion into his police procedural series is sometimes daunting. Mizzly, grey weather, bombed-out buildings, black market goods, and brutal murder combine into a fast-paced story, where Cathy conjures the faces of the dead in her dreams and yearns for the day her fiancé is home for good.
