Far Cry

by John Harvey

Book Overview

Ruth and Simon reluctantly agree to let their young teenage daughter, Heather, go off on a camping holiday in Cornwall with her best friend, Kelly, and her family. While on a vacation of their own,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0099505630
• ISBN13: 9780099505631
• Release Date: May 2010
• Publisher: Arrow
• Length: 592 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

History Repeated

Ruth and Simon Pierce reluctantly allowed their daughter, Heather, to go on a camping trip with her best friend. She soon disappeared, her body later found in a shaft, the girl dead from a fall. The couple was divorced and Ruth remarried, soon giving birth to another daughter, Beatrice. Years later, this girl too disappeared, setting off a manhunt. DI Will Grayson is obsessed with the case and he suspects a recently released child abuser as having abducted the young girl. He and his partner, DS Helen Walker, conduct deep investigations into all aspects of past and present crimes. This is a police procedural at its best. John Harvey creates mountains of suspense, with enough twists and turns to keep the reader turning pages quickly. His command of language and character is flawless, and the plot impeccably constructed. The novel, 500 pages long, yet written with simplicity and economy, never bogs the reader down, and it is highly recommended.

A Master of His Craft

It is often said there is no greater pain than that stemming from the loss of a child. When such a loss is compounded by the uncertainty of that child's fate, the emotional pain suffered by those left behind is so great that their own survival is threatened. Marriages often fail, emotional breakdowns are common, and some parents, believing there is no longer anything to live for, take their own lives. This is the territory visited in "Far Cry," John Harvey's latest story featuring DI Will Grayson and his sometime partner, DS Helen Walker. Detective Grayson is not happy to hear that Mitchell Roberts, a creepy pedophile he helped bring to justice, is being given an early release from prison. Grayson becomes so obsessive about his determination to protect his community from Roberts that he is willing to place his own future in jeopardy in order to keep Roberts from offending again. Despite his borderline tactics, including public humiliation, harassment, and physical contact, Grayson soon learns, however, that Mitchell Roberts will not be intimidated so easily. But when a young girl goes missing, and Grayson is put in charge of the investigation, he knows exactly where he wants to start. It is 1995. Simon and Ruth Pierce, off on a mini-vacation to France after having reluctantly agreed to let their daughter accompany another family on holiday to Cornwall, receive a phone call telling them that she has gone missing there on a freakishly foggy evening. The Pierces will never see their daughter alive again. Flash forward to the present. The Pierce marriage has not survived the tragedy of Heather's death but Ruth is remarried and she and her second husband are raising their own young daughter, Beatrice. Simon, as far as Ruth knows, lives alone and has managed to piece together a new life for himself, however lonely that life might be. Astonishingly, Beatrice has now gone missing and Detective Grayson wonders what the odds against one woman losing both of her daughters to human predators, more than a decade apart, must be. "Far Cry" is a nicely crafted police procedural but its real strength springs from the characters with which John Harvey has peopled his story. Harvey's two investigators are not typical of popular detective fiction and, in fact, seem to share roles exactly opposite what most readers by now will have come to expect from the genre. Will Grayson has a good marriage and he looks forward to returning to his two children and their mother at the end of the workday. Helen Walker, on the other hand, plays the role of the loner prone to too much drinking and shaky decisions regarding her choice of sexual partners. Helen's willingness to get involved with married men and to enjoy the occasional one - night stand leaves Will cold and he worries about her. Ruth Pierce is a well developed character whose struggle to maintain her sanity can be disturbing to watch. She is a woman with secrets, particularly the fact that she often sees and speaks

Intelligent ,engrossing thriller

I have now discovered John Harvey! This is a marvellous read - characters I would like to return to, a most credible plot, and excellent writing. Harvey's pace and structure is terrific. I highly recommend this book.

"If there is a hell, it's now and here."

This is a harrowing tale of child abduction on England's Cornwall coast that bridges 1995 to 2005, when Ruth Pierce, suffers the loss of her ten-year-old daughter, Heather, and survives the ordeal only to have another daughter, Beatrice, abducted at the same age years later. At the crux of the unfolding horror are an elusive pedophile, Mitchell Roberts, and the investigative team of DI Will Grayson and DS Helen Walker of Cambridge, the supporting characters idiosyncratic, bearing dark secrets of their own. Harvey, who has an impressive string of titles to his credit, is a prolific writer whose novels are defined by solid plots and a deep appreciation for the nuances of human behavior. The depth of characterization in Far Cry lends authenticity to what might have been a simple thriller. Harvey's story is peopled with a broad range of personalities, from the duplicitous Mitchell Roberts to Ruth Price/Lawson, a distraught mother reliving a nightmare, to the families touched by tragedy, whether random young girls who are the targets of a particularly heinous criminal and the gypsies who never stay in one place long and harbor a deep resentment for authority. Not the least of the beautifully nuanced characters is the relationship between Grayson and Walker, who tease each other mercilessly but are deadly serious when it comes to the welfare of children in danger. Will is a happily married man, Helen less affable of late, caught up in an inappropriate romance and the need to move on, to make a positive career move. From the traumatic disappearance of Heather and a school friend that leaves one girl alive and the other dead, to the unbelievable recurrence of the happily remarried Ruth's loss of her daughter, Beatrice, Harvey links past with present, exposing the thriving business of child pornography and the opportunism of the internet. Best of all, Far Cry is distinguished by the author's grasp of human behavior and the murky territory of best intentions and outright evil. Ruth's experience is shattering, her husbands, Simon and Andrew, unable to plumb the depths of her despair. These characters are flawed, prone to mistakes and overreaching, the plot taut and riveting from start to finish. From Will's exceptional wife, Lorraine, to his feisty partner, Helen, and his nemesis, Mitchell Roberts, Far Cry is a brilliant mix of human nature at its best and worst, the damaged and the damned. Luan Gaines/2010.