A welcome and sadly concluding installment in the Frank Elder series. Nicely paced and extremely compelling thriller that drew me in from the start. A relatively quick read (pardon the pun) and always a pleasure with John Harvey.

A new-to-me author which I shall have to check out. Well formed main characters and a meticulous police procedural.

I found this to be a very poor story.
It was disjointed with poor character development.
Just did not like it.
Each to there own though.

I have read all the Frank Elder books and thoroughly enjoyed them. Elder is a retired detective with a short fuse and this comes to the fore in this latest novel which revisits his past and takes over his present. A brilliant book which I couldn’t put down, John Harvey at his best.

Frank Elder's daughter Katherine was abducted and raped as a teenager; now a young woman she has largely recovered from the trauma and works as a life model for art schools and artists. She is set back by the portrayal of her, by a well know painter she works for, as a victim of torture. Soon after this the artist is brutally murdered. As the police investigate this Katherines abductor escapes from prison and sets out to wreak revenge on Elder and Katherine. The unmasking of the pauinter's killer seems to come rather out of the blue rather than as a development of the plot.

Sorry to say I didn't enjoy this as much as I hoped I would. The story was a bit flat and there was altogether too much swearing and I did not feel that added one iota to the story.
In fact I had to be careful reading it around my kids so they didn't see all the f-words... The end didn't really have a climax and was a bit abrupt.

I love the cover for this book and after reading the blurb I was intrigued and couldn't wait to get started - I haven't read anything by this author before and I love picking up a new book by a new author to me!

There are plenty of twists and turns in this story, it is quite dark and disturbing in places due to the content but it all works extremely well for the plot and it makes it a brilliant read and it is genuinely chilling in places.

4.5 stars from me rounded up to 5 stars for Amazon and Goodreads - a very enjoyable read that I highly recommend - I loved the writing style!!

This is only the second book that I have read by john Harvey, the other was a paperback that I picked up a few years ago at a car boot sale. This is the first that I have read in the DS Elder series and although it stands alone it would probably have been more enjoyable if I had read the whole series in order.
I was particularly interested in the descriptions of his daughter Katherine and the experiences she had as a naked model for students at art college. The reason for this was that I knew John when we were both students 50 years ago at Goldsmiths College which is unique in that it is both a University College and an Art College. We used to see the models in the refectory covered by nothing other than a Mac and many of us as young students in the 1960's wondered how they could have the courage to pose naked ......... this book returned me to discussions of long ago and to some extent made me reflect again on earlier conversations.
I was sorry to find out that this was the last in the series .....perhaps a reflection of the author's age!!!
Perhaps I will now look up some of the earlier books and hope that they have not been spoilt for me by reading this one first.

Body & Soul is the last in Frank Elder series and, altogether, John Harvey’s swansong. I hadn’t read any of the Frank Elder books so, for me, the broad and slow introduction of this character was welcome. I relished the fact that Harvey refused to jump head-on into a gruesome crime scene to shock and hook the reader. Instead, he started with Elder’s laidback life in semi-retirement, with his songstress love interest Vicki by his side.

The small-village Cornish setting is well drawn. Frank fits in well. The discord and the suspense are built into this idyllic setup slowly and with an assured hand. You can tell that at the back of Frank’s mind a turbulent copper’s past is lurking and refuses to be put to rest. Then comes the arrival of his estranged daughter, Katherine. Her bandaged wrists and her reluctance to talk nevertheless tell a tragic tale. Frank uncovers only snapshots of what might have happened, but that’s all he needs: his little girl has been badly hurt. That unleashes their long-buried past and Frank’s internal demons. He burst onto the bohemian London arts scene to punish Antony Winters, a man he blames for Katherine’s breakdown.

The characterisation is excellent: the raging father, the vulnerable, damaged daughter, the smooth, thrills-seeking artist, and then the psychotic criminal responsible for Katherine’s broken body and soul. The investigating officer is no longer retired detective Frank Elder – it is DI Alex Hadley. She is trying to calmly and sensitively put it all together, meandering between father’s grief and daughter’s unreliable mind.

I found the ending brutal, but not unrealistic. My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for making it possible for me to get to know Frank Elder in this final chapter.

A great read! A lot of twists and turns which keep you on tenterhooks throughout! The characters were made to be so realistic that it really involved you into the story.

Just a bit dull and disappointing.

A depressed ex-police officer, a murder in which his daughter is implicated and not much else to enjoy.

Retired DS Elder now lives in Cornwall after becoming estranged from his daughter Katherine and ex-wife Joanne. Katherine still struggles with memories and dreams of her abduction when she was 16 years old even though it was her dad that found and saved her. She finally plucks up the courage to become a life model for the semi well known artist Anthony Winter, but when he turns up murdered it drags Katherine and her dad back into a world they thought they had escaped. To add to the tension, Adam Keach the man responsible for Katherine's abduction is on the loose.

The storyline is great reading but was quite disappointed with the ending which didn't answer/explain anything. Quite a let down at the end but thank you to Netgalley and the author for allowing me to read it

I found the book a little difficult to get into, however I persevered and enjoyed the thriller with twists about a retired detective, his estranged daughter and the daughters artist lover. The detective and his daughter have gone through a very traumatic time in the past and with the death of the artist, the detective is trying to protect his daughter and prove his innocence. Good crime writing.

Lives Up to Its Billing

This is my first John Harvey novel; I received a copy to review and I really enjoyed it. Although I hadn't read any of the earlier Frank Elder books, I now plan to - although this is the last in the series, it stands alone and doesn't spoil the earlier volumes for a keen crime aficionado.

Recommended for anyone who enjoys a well-written murder mystery with a twist; the UK setting appeals to me as do the sub-plots and back stories. Enjoy!

A father and an estranged daughter are brought back together again forced relive events that tore them apart.

This procedural crime thriller is a complete page turner and, although the final installment in a series, is perfectly suited to all-comers with plenty of scene setting and no assumption of prior knowledge of the characters.

Harvey is adept at giving depth to his characters and as the book progresses you really do feel like you are able to get under their skins. The settings and procedural aspects are well-researched although, if I were to criticise anything there are occasional slips which are possibly not noticed by the majority of readers but which will be picked up by those with a good working knowledge of police procedure.

For me, the threads of the story were brought together a little too abruptly at the end of the book and I finished feeling a little underwhelmed at the end and it is for this reason that the book misses out on its 5th star. I would, however, heartily recommend it.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, Random House UK, Cornerstone, for the advance copy!

I hate to admit it and it’s something I rarely do but I skimmed through lots Nd lots of this book which I found difficult to enjoy. Perhaps if I had read the other books in the series I may have felt more engaged but I certainly did not get engrossed enough in this one to want to read any earlier ones.

Tough,gritty thriller set in Cornwall and London. Retired policeman and his daughter and their struggle to deal with what happened to them. Interesting,diverse characters.

Frank Elder goes out with a bang – very good detective thriller

The last of the Frank Elder series of books by the author, this detective thriller deals with Frank’s daughter, Katherine, and an artist, Anthony Wilder, for whom she poses as a model. When he is murdered, Frank gets involved. This police procedural also has various police forces involved in some murders elsewhere in the country (trying not to give too much away!).

As one can expect from John Harvey, the novel moves along at a fair pace and is a page-turner, engaging and exciting in places. Characters are well-developed and the reader is not submerged in buckets of descriptions. Well recommended to all lovers of detective fiction.

I have loved everything that John Harvey has written and this was no exception. A brilliant follow on from the previous Frank Elder books. I was totally hooked from the start. As a Nottingham girl, I was glad that there were still some mentions of it but he also speaks about the Penwith Peninsula which is another place close to my heart. I can't wait to read John Harvey's next book.

John Harvey is just so good. He follows the conventions but never the clichés of crime fiction and, although the characterisation and settings are strong, he never over-burdens the reader with detail at the expense of plot. Body and Soul is sadly the last in the Frank Elder series, but if you haven't encountered Frank before this still stands alone as a well-observed, very readable and highly enjoyable contemporary novel.