“Got to be more to life than sex and violence, hasn’t there?”Lonely Hearts, from British author John Harvey, is the first novel in the long-running Charlie Resnick series. With interesting characters, the book is a good beginning, and the emphasis is on a handful of Nottingham based police detectives who work for Resnick. These detectives have an array of personal problems which become glaringly apparent as Resnick’s team try to solve the vicious murder of a young woman. PC Patel is making routine inquiries regarding another crime in a neighborhood when a vague suspicion sends him into a house where he discovers the body of Shirley Peters, strangled with her own scarf. At first, the murder seems like a nice, tidy “open and sodding shut” case. Shirley’s ex boyfriend is violent and jealous, and he has a history of stalking Shirley. But then a second murder occurs–even more violent than the first, and a forensic match tells Resnick that the two women were murdered by the same man. A little digging uncovers the clue that both women advertised in the ‘lonely hearts’ column of the local paper, and Resnick suspects that the killer selected his victims from these encounters. The second victim even kept a pile of letters from the men she met–43 letters total. Resnick’s case isn’t easy. One of the women met a man a week. So Resnick’s team painstakingly tracks down the many men who answered ads placed by the two victims.Against the backdrop of the murders of these two lonely women, John Harvey creates Resnick, a man who understands loneliness; he’s divorced, middle-aged and lives with four cats for company. While he’s a good detective, he neglects himself, so he often turns up in rumpled clothing, and at one point has a food-stained tie. Resnick’s neglect of himself is becoming so obvious that he’s beginning to generate comments. Resnick, deep in middle-age, has neglected his body, and since he eats badly (he eats heavy meals irregularly), he’s beginning to turn to fat. Resnick is every bit as lonely as the dead women who placed the ads.Another theme of the novel is abusive relationships, and there’s certainly more than one of those here. Resnick is scheduled to appear and testify in a sickening child abuse case, and it’s a situation in which he finds himself considering how the ‘law’ doesn’t equal ‘justice.’ He meets and becomes attracted to Rachel, a social worker, whose relationship with her live-in boyfriend is going south. Lonely Hearts shows how relationships that go wrong can so easily flip into violent abuse when one partner refuses to accept that it’s over. But even the non-abusive relationships in the novel seem to be examples of people ‘settling’ for another person who’s little more than a warm body–anything except be alone. So on one hand, we see characters who are seeking love, companionship and sex, and on the other hand we have characters who have partners who occupy a space in their lives but little more. Many of the couples seem to be together out of habit and are so plagued with inertia, they lack the energy to leave.The ending of the novel was too Hollywood/sensationalistic (read unrealistic) for my tastes, and Rachel was a rather annoying character. The best part of the novel for this reader, and it certainly promises more for the series, are the interesting characters surrounding Resnick: there’s Divine, an old school sexist detective who harasses his married partner, Kevin Naylor. Kevin Naylor is distracted by the sudden overwhelming requirements of married life and its endless demands. He feels somewhat disoriented by the sudden new path his life has taken as if he took the wrong escalator and can’t get off. In many ways Naylor, who keeps his problems to himself, envies womanizer Divine:"Why couldn’t he be like Divine? The world divided into three equal parts: you drank it, fly-tackled it, or got your leg over it."Of course, men like the crass Divine want men like Naylor to envy them. Then there’s Lynn Kellogg, a young policewoman from Norfolk whose instincts indicate that she’s going to have a stellar career. There’s some unspoken antagonism between Lynn and Divine, and there’s a question about who ripped off Divine’s beloved girlie posters off the wall. Resnick is considering reshuffling partners as the story plays out, and that should make for some intriguing sequels. Lynn, in many ways, is a female Resnick; her energy and her passion centre on her career, and she’s just one of the characters who evaluates a tepid relationship.This has been made into a TV film with the excellent Tom Wilkinson as Resnick.Review copy.
I randonly picked up the eight in this series and liked it so much I went back to the first Chrlie Resnick Mystery. Set in a CID headquarters in England's Midlands, this first novel introduces Charley Resnick forty, a little overweight, underexercised, divorced with four cats. He loves food and American jazz and is the only child of Polish immigrants. His first case involves two women murdered by someone and the only connectuion between the two is they placed ads in the newpapers in a loney hearts section. Charlie is an endearing character who loves his job and is compassionate and smart. Charlie meets Rachel who works for social services while testifying against a father accused of molesting his seven-year-old daughter. The have immediate chemistry and their relationship grows during his search for the killer of the two women. Much detail is spent on the machinations of police procedures. Ready for the next Charlie detective novel.
What do You think about Lonely Hearts (1995)?
When Shirley Peters is found strangled, it initially appears to be an open and shut case when the police arrest her common-law husband, Tony Macliesh. He has a history of violence, a police record, is insanely jealous and they’ve been split up for eighteen months. Shirley also had a restraining order against him.However they soon find out that Tony is not guilty when the second woman is murdered while they have Tony in custody. As they dig deeper into both murders they find that the only things the two women have in common is that they had shared an interest in the local newspaper’s Lonely Hearts column.Lonely Hearts introduces the reader to Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick. There are eleven books currently in the Resnick series and I look forward to reading all of them. Lonely Hearts left me wanting to read more about DI Charlie Resnick and his team.
—Gina Metz
I had never heard of John Harvey before, he would seem to be one of the best kept secrets in crime writing, and he is unlike other British crime writers in that despite being set in a provincial setting there is not an attempt to ape American crime writing.He is a fine stylist, and also appreciates the importance of plot and procedure when writing a novel with a police officer at the heart of the story.The serial killer angle is a bit old hat now, and the villain is somewhat unconvincing, but it is a good book and I am now trying to get my hands on the rest of the resnick series.
—Pete
I was a little slow to connect with (and warm to) both this book and to Nottingham UK's D.I. Charlie Resnick, but I did. Glad I persevered. Written in 1995, it has a period feel to it and at times that period felt more like the '50s, odd... but in a way added to the intrigue. Resnick is divorced with four cats, the son of Polish immigrants, gone to seed a little physically, attracted to a woman in a way that seems unlikely to end well. Women die, serial killer is pursued. Yet, the plotting wires cross in an intriguing way. No spoilers...let's just say that after reading the climax and putting the book down, I wasn't sure what had just happened. Initially, I felt a soupcon of frustration. Then, I felt compelled to dip back into the book, looking for answers I might have missed. Nope. So, it is, ultimately, a book that (for me anyway) still has question marks about the actions of one key player and about quite what had been done by whom. But that's okay. (I DO wonder if book #2 clears up the mystery and will likely read it to find out.) Overall, enjoyable and quite compelling.
—Sue Russell
