I’d read one of John Carson’s Harry McNeil mysteries before. I reviewed it as being a decent police story, but I thought the cop banter was inexpertly done.
In Return to Evil, Edinburgh Detective McNeil, fresh off Professional Standards (what we’d call Internal Affairs in the US), has been assigned to Cold Cases. The officers he works with there are not happy – it’s considered a squad where careers go to die. They’re looking at the murder of a girl in a cemetery, some years ago. She was 15 years old and pregnant, and someone tipped a gravestone onto her. It happened during the shooting of a science fiction movie, now considered a classic.
And now the movie is being remade on the same location, and another girl is found dead in the same way. The cold case becomes a hot one.
My main problem with this book is one I’ve complained about in other books recently – most of the characters aren’t described. I had trouble keeping them straight. The cop banter didn’t annoy me as much this time out, but I still thought the male and female characters were excessively interchangeable.
Not bad, but I can’t recommend Return to Evil highly.
