Sun 9 Jul 2017
Reviewed by Barry Gardner: JILL McGOWN – Murder … Now and Then.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[10] Comments
JILL McGOWN – Murder … Now and Then. [Det. Insp.] Lloyd & [Det. Sgt.] Hill #6. St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1993. Fawcett, US, paperback, 1995. First published in the UK by Macmillan, hardcover, 1993.
How many times do I have to tell you? Jill McGown is one of the best British crime novelists currently writing. I put her in the same class with Reginald Hill and John Harvey, and ahead of Ruth Rendell.
Now, in 1993, Lloyd is in official attendance at a business ceremony where a new owner is taking over a company. A new manager has been promoted, one very unpopular with the old owner. When the new owner walks in, the new manager’s wife faints. Shortly thereafter, the new manager is caught slapping and berating her. Before the night is ended, murder is done.
Then, 15 years before, the players set in motion a chain of events that culminate in unsolved murder in that time, and lead to murder in the present. Lloyd and Hill were there at the beginning as they will be at the end when all the sealed boxes are opened.
McGown is noted (at least by me) for her complex plots, and this is one of her twistiest. Viewpoints and times shift back and forth rapidly, and it’s a mark of her virtuosity that the reader is not left completely at sea. Her prose is terse and straight-forward, but by the end of the story all of the major players have become fully realized people.
Lloyd (first name unknown) and Judy Hill have over the course of the series become among the most realistic of contemporary cops as human beings, and their relationship equally so. There isn’t anything I dislike about McGown’s Lloyd and Hill books, and they’ve yet to disappoint me. There are damned few series about which I can say those things.
Bibliographic Note: There were 13 books in the Lloyd & Hill series, the last being Unlucky for Some (2004)
July 9th, 2017 at 4:18 pm
Barry almost has me convinced. I’ll have to consider delving deeper into this series.
July 9th, 2017 at 5:33 pm
That goes for me also. I read one quite a few years ago, one of her first, I think, and I wasn’t impressed enough to try another. Barry is quite persuasive. That may have been both a misjudgment and a mistake on my part.
July 10th, 2017 at 6:43 am
Proving I am a TV fan first, book fan second, as soon as I saw Lloyd & Hill I thought of the unsold British TV pilot I have on my to watch list.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf8zZVClx0E
July 10th, 2017 at 10:06 am
Thanks for this, Michael. I had no idea that a pilot like this was made, much less was on YouTube. I’m caught between watching it now or waiting until I’ve read one of the books. Wait too long, though, and there’s a good chance it’ll be gone…
July 10th, 2017 at 3:46 pm
I read the very first Lloyd/Hill novel years ago and I wasn’t impressed at all, but I read another (the third in the series, I think) a few weeks ago and found it impressive indeed. There’s a five year gap between the first and the second novel in the series; I don’t know whether there was dramatic improvement in McGown’s writing over that period or if I was simply a less discerning reader back in 2009/10, but the McGown novel I read recently, Gone to Her Death, was really excellent. I wouldn’t quite put it on the same level as Reg Hill or Ruth Rendell, but it’s definitely close.
July 10th, 2017 at 8:44 pm
Kacper
I hadn’t notice that five year gap before, maybe because she wrote three other books in between that weren’t part of the series. By the time she got around to writing the second Lloyd and Hill, she probably had a much better idea of what she wanted to do with them. I’m going to have to try another one myself, as soon as I can.
July 11th, 2017 at 1:41 am
I have found many series fiction – books and TV – get better with age. The first story can be too busy setting up characters and premise to have a decent plot. Often it takes a few books or seasons before the writer finally gets a handle on the characters and what stories work best.
July 11th, 2017 at 5:52 am
I’m with Barry on this one. The first may not be the best, but overall this is a favorite series. Rather than Rendell, however, the one I’d compare her to is Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.
That reminds me. If you watch Jeopardy, you’d have seen mystery writer Dorothy Simpson included in the Wales-related category yesterday. And the contestant got it right.
July 11th, 2017 at 1:16 pm
Answer: Works by Welsh mystery novelist Dorothy Simpson include “Dead and Gone”, “Dead by Morning” & this one, aka “D.O.A.”
Question: What is DEAD ON ARRIVAL?
July 11th, 2017 at 5:18 pm
Thanks for fixing that, Steve.