Condemned

A deserted Yorkshire manor house sits atop a windswept hill, awaiting demolition. After an arson attack, DI Charley Mann receives a call-out to investigate. It becomes a bigger job when 2 bodies are unearthed, and more complex still when forensics reveals the bodies were killed decades apart. 

So begins Condemned, a crime novel by RC Bridgestock, the name under which husband and wife Robert and Carol Bridgestock write. 

Listen, I really wanted to like this book. I did. I even have family down the road from Marsden, where the story is set. The main problem I had is the dialogue was so, so bad. Whether it’s hardened criminals (of which the authors clearly have no real life experience) or world-weary Yorkshire coppers (I’m not convinced they know much of these either) you find yourself thinking, people don’t really talk like that. There are entire passages where a character becomes a mouthpiece for the research the authors have done, seemingly for the sake of it, speaking of history like they’re reading a page of Wikipedia. Even the grammar is terrible: why hyphenate ‘ballache’ but not headache? Just because your word processor (like mine) doesn’t recognise it doesn’t mean the slang word hasn’t entered the lexicon. The Bridgestocks (and their editors, seemingly) confuse regular words too, like moral/morale. And how the fuck can a dog be wagging it’s tail ‘ferociously?’ tail-wagging is a sign of canine happiness, FFS. Why tell us that someone’s signature hadn’t changed? Why would it? Another thing the authors are naive to: clearly neither has ever been in a fight. How could you hold someone in a headlock AND point a gun at them? Unless you’re Goro from Mortal Kombat. 

A very frustrating, confusing and not very interesting book. Not one of subscription service Teatime Bookshop’s best selections.