1995 police procedural audio in five parts, by Nick Fisher. An
accountant is killed messily in his flat in Smithfield; DSI Julie
Enfield investigates.
I'm starting to find Fisher's tricks quite samey: someone talks
in a nasty way about something which sounds criminal but which turns
out to have an entirely innocent explanation (here the business of
butchery). Less forgivably, there's another bolshy young woman who
keeps turning up in the context of the crimes; that's specific enough
that you really shouldn't do it often.
That said, Staunton is a trouper and does a remarkably good job with
material that's often weak. (All right, I lived in Smithfield for a
year and so it's perhaps less shocking to me than it would have been
to many listeners.) The romantic angle works less well than the
policing, but that's hardly a surprise; Enfield's protectiveness of
her underlings, having lost one in the previous story, is solid and
effective.
What seems to be a standard mad killer story turns into something
rather more interesting, though I don't feel it particularly holds
together in retrospect. Fisher's forté is gothic atmosphere more than
plot-mechanics.
There appear to be two other Julie Enfields that I haven't yet heard,
The Net and the Canal (1996) and Murder West One (1999, shorter
pieces); I wait for the BBC to get round to making them available
again.
Freely available for the moment via
iPlayer.
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