By Lynda Le Plante https://lyndalaplante.com/ @LaPlanteLynda
Narrated by Jessica Ball
Published by Bolinda/Bonnier Audio https://www.bolinda.com/ @Bolindaaudio, Zaffre https://www.bonnierbooks.co.uk/imprints/zaffre/ @ZaffreBooks (an imprint of Bonnier Books UK https://www.bonnierbooks.co.uk/ @bonnierbooks_uk)
418 pages (11 hours 9 minutes) ISBN 9781489419187
Publication date 23 August 2017
Good Friday is the third novel the Jane Tennison Thriller Series.
I reviewed an audiobook using the BorrowBox library app https://www.borrowbox.com/ @BorrowBox. I would like to thank Tracy Fenton @Tr4cyF3nt0n from Compulsive Readers for the opportunity to take part in the #TEAMTENNISON review project. Click on the links to read my reviews of Tennison and Hidden Killers. My review of Murder Mile the fourth novel in the series will be posted on this blog in the final week in November.
The Cover
I can’t even deduce what the audiobook cover is trying to represent. The book cover (as shown) is much more atmospheric and in keeping with the series. A woman (presumably Jane) dashing upstairs with some urgency.
The narration
After Julie Teal narrated the first two books in the series, there is a change of narrator (presumably linked to the publisher change) to Jessica Ball. Never an easy task to pick up the baton after a narrator is established but Jessica has done this with some aplomb. Quite different but just as good.
My thoughts
Its 1976 and London has been rocked throughout 1974 and 1975 by a series of gun and bombs attacks by the IRA. The Bomb Squad is struggling to counteract the Active Service Units (ASU) of the IRA though there has just been the successful conclusion of the Balcombe Street siege. These were truly dark days to live through, even more so in London and Birmingham. Days nobody wants to revisit but it would be amiss for it not to be covered within this novel series. Here the author has covered it from the police perspective in the main, but we do see the motivation of at least one member of the ASU.
Jane Tennison has settled well into life as a fully-fledged WDC but is finding the work somewhat tiresome. She is bottom of the pecking order and gets all the mundane, routine jobs which she finds frustrating after the initial baptism of fire at Hackney and her first case at Bow Street. Not content to stick around tackling a shoplifting gang she has her head turned by Brian Edwards who is now in the Flying Squad. There are no female officers in The Sweeney (cockney rhyming slang – Sweeney Todd = Flying Squad) so the reckless and over ambitious Jane wants to be the first.
Jane gets her move but its not to the Sweeney but the Dip Squad, which targets the pickpocket gangs operating in the West End. Disappointed that its not the move she craved, Jane treats it as a chance to learn and hopes it will be a stepping stone up, though it seems to be where failed Sweeney officers end up. Her first day doesn’t go well but already we she that Jane has the uncanny knack or plain luck to pull victory from the jaws of defeat. On her second day she is caught up in an IRA bombing at Covent Garden Tube station and her face is plastered over the newspapers helping the injured. Now identified she is in grave danger and from this point she is pulled into working with the Bomb Squad until the ASU is caught.
We see a Bomb Squad under real pressure to get results sometimes cutting covers to get a result. An acknowledgement that amongst the successes were some miscarriages of justice.
Already an incident packed first few chapters, but after that, I’m giving nothing away by saying it is a novel that builds up to a big set piece finale. This build up is beautifully judged mixing tension with periodic pressure releases before it ratchets up again with searches and chases before a scene with real jeopardy.
Good Friday is the day of the formal CDI dinner, the major event of their year, so what bigger prize for a terrorist organisation to strike. Quite a fitting choice of day too, as The Long Good Friday is many people’s choice of the best UK gangster/crime film which also involves the IRA. In one of those strange coincidences in life there is the parallel that Helen Mirren played the female lead and was then to become the TV version of Jane Tennison. Good Friday is the Christian day that represents the ultimate sacrifice and so works as an allegory for the work of the bomb disposal experts, who willingly face death every time they try to defuse a bomb. In Dexter we have the hero, the man’s man, the womaniser but he is also a little cold and distant, unable to put down roots or have a lasting relationship. All these traits are perfectly captured, but despite living on a knife edge we see he is a caring man.
Jane’s character is developing nicely as she gains more depth. So far, she has been concentrating on her career, but she realises that she needs friends and a love life, which she addresses with mixed success. She also ends up reassessing some of her working colleagues as her first impressions are not always right. Moving out of the station house and buying her own flat broadens her horizons and leads to an interesting flatmate.
Her enthusiasm to progress her career still causes her problems as she bumbles her way into situations she shouldn’t, at times being too much of a loose cannon. She continues to learn important lessons in doing so and must learn to become more detached, not to take every development personally. Officers cannot afford to care too much. It is her instincts and observations that are making her an excellent investigator and getting her out of hot water. After ‘that dress’ she had to wear at Pam’s wedding she gets to pick a high-end ball gown for the dinner, which of course is a potential disaster waiting to happen…
Good Friday brilliantly captures the fears of a nation back in 1976 and builds up to a thrilling finale. Jane still has a long journey ahead.
Good Friday can be purchased through the Bookshop.org here
The author
Lynda La Plante (born Lynda Titchmarsh) is a British author, screenwriter, and erstwhile actress (her performances in Rentaghost and other programmes were under her stage name of Lynda Marchal), best known for writing the Prime Suspect television crime series.
Her first TV series as a scriptwriter was the six part robbery series Widows, in 1983, in which the widows of four armed robbers carry out a heist planned by their deceased husbands.
In 1991 ITV released Prime Suspect which has now run to seven series and stars Helen Mirren as DCI Jane Tennison. (In the United States Prime Suspect airs on PBS as part of the anthology program Mystery!) In 1993 La Plante won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for her work on the series. In 1992 she wrote at TV movie called Seekers, starring Brenda Fricker and Josette Simon, produced by Sarah Lawson.
She formed her own television production company, La Plante Productions, in 1994 and as La Plante Productions she wrote and produced the sequel to Widows, the equally gutsy She’s Out (ITV, 1995). The name “La Plante” comes from her marriage to writer Richard La Plante, author of the book Mantis and Hog Fever. La Plante divorced Lynda in the early 1990s.
Her output continued with The Governor (ITV 1995-96), a series focusing on the female governor of a high security prison, and was followed by a string of ratings pulling miniseries: the psycho killer nightmare events of Trial & Retribution (ITV 1997-), the widows’ revenge of the murders of their husbands & children Bella Mafia (1997) (starring Vanessa Redgrave), the undercover police unit operations of Supply and Demand (ITV 1998), videogame/internet murder mystery Killer Net (Channel 4 1998) and the female criminal profiler cases of Mind Games (ITV 2001).
Two additions to the Trial and Retribution miniseries were broadcast during 2006.
Source: Goodreads profile
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