A Likeness In Stone

Rating:
Summary: A very good mystery with gothic overtones
Review: It took almost two decades before the corpse of college student Helena Warner was found by divers in a building submerged by a reservoir. The news of the discovery reaches retired Detective Chief Inspector Bill Driver who never liked leaving a case open. He was positive what happened to her when the coed disappeared and still remains certain that her lover Ian Gilmore is Helena's killer.

Bill is driven to join the investigation, something the current force does not appreciate. Two other suspects besides Ian surface Helena's best friend Joan Poole and another former student. As Bill seeks the connections between the deceased and her three potential culprits, another dead body is found that is eerily similar to the Warner case. Bill realizes that he must quickly uncover the killer's identity before the individual becomes a mass murdering serial killer.

A LIKENESS IN STONE combines the best of the British police procedural with a chilling psychological drama into an incredibly well-written and exciting debut novel. Bill and the rest of the cast are all top rate characters, but it is the cleverly designed story line which constantly forces readers to reevaluate what they think is going to occur that turns this book into something special. Keep an eye out for J. Wallis Martin because if this novel is any indication, she has a great career ahead of her.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Gloomy but compelling thriller in Rendellian vein
Review: This was the debut novel from Julia Wallis Martin and it marked her out as another in the line of women writers from the UK exploring the same fictional territory as Rendell and McDermid.
It begins with the discovery of a body in a wardrobe in a house submerged under a reservoir near Oxford.It is that of Helena Warner,an attractive and sexually voracious undergraduate of Somerville College who had vanished some 19 years earlier following a student party.The officer in charge,Driver,suspected foul play-rightly-but had been unable to prove it.
Now retired,Driver is called in by the police to add knowledge and expertise.The years have not been kind to the students under suspicion at the time.One-Joan,a plain unattractive girl,has a failed career as a writer and lives on state benefits,being reduced to paying her rent with sexual favours,one- Wachmann-is a long term resident in an institution where he is under treatment for depression,while chief suspect Gilmore has developed into a commitment phobe with a mundane job.
The police probe away at the case ,causing ripples in all their lives bringing to the surface all the guilt and lack of closure in their subsequent lives.
Add the discovery of decomposed bodies in Warwickshire farmhouses and the murder of the mother of one of the students involved and the brew gets ever thicker and more opaque.
It is as much a character study and an examination of lives unfulfilled as it is a police procedural and the result is a densely wrought if oppressive novel whose debts to Rendell in particular are obvious.It does conclude on a note of qualified hope to ameliorate the gloom
It is perhaps somewhat too derivative but in a debut this is scarcely suprising and the weight and power of the book make it recommendable to lovers of the Brit hard boiled school

Rating:
Summary: Minette who? Julia Wallis Martin is incomparable. . .
Review: What a neat book. I was browsing through Amazon's ". . .customer's also bought. . ." portion of the book reviews and found this book. I couldn't put it down and in fact read it in one marathon sitting on a long flight. Julia Wallis Martin has managed to write a dark and compelling mystery with an ending (and I usually guess who did it) that was in hindsight sort of obvious but so well masked in ambiguity that I wasn't really sure. Now that's a mystery! On top of that I realized that none of the characters were at all likeable, (except for maybe the intrepid Detective Driver) yet I really could not stop reading or caring about the outcome. I highly recommend this book---and am looking forward to reading her next book asap.