Enough Rope
""...a fast moving and action packed story. " "
Synopsis:
Lee Arnold and Mumtaz Hakim are unlikely partners. Lee is an ex copper and Mumtaz is a widowed psychology graduate with a teenaged daughter. She also has some unsavoury characters extorting money from her. Lee is definitely old East End and Mumtaz has many connections with the South Asian community. Together they run a detective agency catering for all. Both of them look askance at the new influx of rich kids developing a new trendy East End.
An old colleague of Lee, Superintendent Paul Venus, finds himself with a problem when his son disappears from school. For various reasons Venus does not want to involve his police colleagues so he turns to Lee Arnold to do a bit of covert digging for him. Meanwhile, Mumtaz is working on tracing the birth parents of a woman who is suffering from a fatal disease.
The unlikely truth and the involvement of the woman's son with Lee's investigation lead the two investigators into very murky and dangerous ground. As Mumtaz' daughter grows up and begins to attract unwelcome attention from some evil members of the community, Mumtaz finds herself pushed into a dangerous and impossible corner. There is only one place to go for help. But that is another story!
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Review:
At one level this is a straightforward investigation of a kidnapping, but as the story moves on, other particularly nasty developments occur. As always, Barbara Nadel addresses the issue of the moment in her plotting of a fast moving and action packed story. In this case she is considering the phenomenon of the gentrification of the East End and the effect the trendy new young people have on the older residents. In this case the youngsters are inconsiderate, rude and definitely criminal. Barbara Nadel is obviously not a fan of a certain type of Public School as her description of Reed's is extremely disconcerting. The interweaving of the two directions of the investigation is cleverly handled. Lee Arnold and Mumtaz appear to be working on completely separate cases but adept plotting brings the characters together in a fast moving and exciting finale. Nadel's strong views are very much in evidence in this book but it is all the more relevant because of that. Another brilliant chapter in a spellbinding series from the magnificent imagination of Nadel.