1. Talking to the Dead
2. Love Story, with Murders
3. The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths
4. This Thing of Darkness
5. The Dead House
6. The Deepest Grave
Rating: I like and recommend
I am looking at the series as a whole but I don't think there are any spoilers. You can get plot summaries at the Amazon links above and at the link to the author's website below.
Discovering a new series is one of the great joys in the life of an avid reader and I have a post in a Facebook post for bringing these books into the house. Even more joy, I was late to this series so I had five to read at once. I powered through all five available at the time in short order. While I wanted to read slowly and savour the text, these are "no good stopping place" books meaning I had to read just one more chapter. Number six came out this summer and is now waiting on my Kindle so I can continue my binge watching.
If you like to categorize your reading, I'll call this series crime thriller with procedural elements and a sub-genre of defective detective. Fiona Griffiths is a very junior DC (detective constable) in Cardiff, Wales. She is short on social skills but an extraordinary detective capable of connecting events and data more so than any of her peers. Her superiors recognize Fiona's abilities but find themselves challenged when it comes to managing her. OK, you might be saying "Not this plot device again" and I might ordinarily agree but Bingham handles the interactions between Fiona and the higher-up in the force very well and often with humor.
Why did I include this series in the "defective detective" sub-genre? Something happened to Fiona as a teenager that left her with an affinity for the dead and and about 90 degrees off-center from the way everyone else thinks and acts. What happened to her is a real corker of an idea and one the reader needs to discover for themselves. I will say that she's not a Lisbeth Salander or Sherlock Holmes type.
The stories are first person from Fiona's viewpoint. She is very self-aware of how different she is from everyone else which adds humor as she tries to figure out how a normal person would react. This really comes out as she tries to relate to other women. My wife thinks Bingham does very well writing a female character. Her only criticism so far is that Fiona never has a period.
We also get wry observational humor from Fiona:
Accounts come in pairs these days. A middle-aged man in a dark suit and a sheen of perspiration, plus his younger accomplice, a woman who looks like her hobbies are arranging things in rows and making right angles.It is a common occurrence when one of us is reading a book that the other has finished that the reader will chuckle and the other demand to know where they are in the book.
These series needs to be read in order as there are threads that run through all the books. This verges on serious spoilerdom so I'll just say that one thread is personal to Fiona and the other relates to something in book one that has repercussions throughout the series. Sometimes the threads cross. Bingham is a master at subtly weaving these threads through the books.
The plots are complex without being dense and the author manages to explain the complexity without making it an infodump. Seriously, Bingham makes Fiona looking at spreadsheets interesting. Here is a taste—if you've ever wondered how police are trained for undercover work in the UK, you'll find out.
The books do sometimes rely on coincidences that might stretch your credulity a bit but honestly, you don't care, the stories are just so much fun to read.
Check out Harry Bingham's website. If you sign up for his newsletter he'll some bonuses he'll share with you..
Oh, I like these stories a lot, too, Mack. I think they're well-done, and Fiona Griffiths is an interesting character. The Cardiff setting appeals to me, too. And I agree: discovering a new series is a great experience.
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