Gone to Ground

by John Harvey

Book Overview

When police detective Will Grayson and his partner, Helen Walker, investigate the violent death of Stephen Bryan, a gay academic, their first thoughts are of an ill-judged sexual encounter or a fatal... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151013632
• ISBN13: 9780151013630
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 387 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.5" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Old Sins, New Consequences

Past and present overlap when British film professor Stephen Bryan is brutally murdered in his home. At first it seems to be a crime of passion or a hate crime (the victim was gay), but soon the case becomes more complicated. Prof. Bryan was working on a book, a biography of a 1950s movie star named Stella Leonard. As the local police and Bryan's journalist sister investigate his death, the old movie star and her dysfunctional family keep coming into view. It seems someone didn't want Stella Leonard's secrets to be made public in a biography. And the killing may not be over.... I love John Harvey's books. His writing is always clear and straightforward and perfectly detailed. His Charlie Resnick and Frank Elder series are wonderful, but in GONE TO GROUND he introduces a new pair of police investigators who should delight all fans of British mysteries. Will Grayson (married with kids) and Helen Walker (alone and not happy about it) are a great team, and their first case is very exciting. Highly recommended.

Vivid characters, human situations

A few detective novelists are as good at the "novelist" part as they are at the "detective" part--maybe better. Such people as Robert Crais, Sara Paretsky, Robert Barnard, Lawrence Block (in the Scudder novels) create characters and situations that are involving and emotionally true--whatever the supposed "thriller" plot may be. John Harvey is certainly one of these. His prose is superb. He trained as a poet, and it shows. His word-choice is spectacular--tight, multilayered, vivid. Even better are his characters. In this one, we get a whole new set: principally the Cambridge police detective team Will Grayson and Helen Walker. Grayson is stiff but tough. He has a lot to learn--not about detecting, but about life--and, amazingly, he learns it. Walker is excellent. Sharp-tongued, brave, bright, sassy, tenacious. When she is attacked, you can feel your heart sink. She's like a real person, like one of your friends. There are two plots here, but they converge. Great stuff. If you haven't read Harvey, and like good prose, good novels, and interesting thrillers, give him a try.

SPARE PROSE, INTRICATE PLOTTING - HARVEY IS SUPERB

As a well known thriller writer said of John Harvey, "He writes the way we all wish we could." More than true. If you haven't given yourself the pleasure of reading a Harvey book, do it now. His prose is spare, his plotting is intricately wrought and quickly paced, his characters sharply drawn, affecting. Harvey's descriptive skill captures minds as well as eyes - can you not see "the ivory lozenge" of a doorbell? A stand alone British police procedural following his enormously successful Charlie Resnick series, Gone to Ground reunites Will Grayson and Helen Walker (who were introduced in an earlier short story ). They're at the top of Cambridge's Major Investigation Team, and have worked together for three years. Now they're faced with a particularly heinous crime - the fatal beating of Stephen Bryan. This was an act so brutal that "the man's face...was like a glove that had been pulled inside out." Bryan's lodging had been ransacked but what could a gay teacher have had that was worth murder? He was well thought of, apparently liked by his colleagues. When Grayson and Walker learn that Bryan has recently ended a relationship with former lover, Mark McKusick, they focus on him. A crime of jealousy and passion? However, it's not long before other events catch their eyes - recent homophobic related gang beatings, threats made to Bryan demanding that he stop working on a book he was writing about Stella Leonard, a ` 50s film star. Bryan's sister, Lesley, a radio newscaster is frustrated by what she considers to be lack of results by police so she begins an investigation of her own. Enter Howard Prince, a zealous real estate broker married to Stella's apparently unstable sister, and Natalie Prince, a relative of Stella's and a young actress who has a tendency to run riot. Together Lesley and Natalie make some astounding discoveries. However, for this reader it's not the solving of the crime that lingers but the sheer delight in Harvey's telling which, at times, borders on the poetic. He's a consummate craftsman, a topnotch storyteller. Highly recommended. - Gail Cooke

"Violence that extreme, it suggests real danger, doesn't it?"

A solid mixture of British murder mystery and police procedural this novel orbits around the life a long-dead b-grade film actress and a modern day murder that at first appears to be a hate crime. But it is also in this story, that author John Harvey debuts too new detectives, Detective Inspector Will Grayson and Detective Sergeant Helen Walker, whose complicated personal lives add much to the three dimensionality and excitement of this tale. The thirty-something gay academic Stephen Bryan's career has been such a success that he's even started research a biography about Stella Leonard's life, a glamorous fifties film star who died a mystifying death in a car accident. Never a super-star, Stella did achieve a modicum of fame after she starred in a reasonably successful noir movie called Shattered Glass. But then suddenly Stella was dead, the car she was a passenger in driven inexplicably off the road and into a ravine on one dark and stormy night. This tangential event echoes throughout the decades when Bryan is found murdered, his body found horribly bruised and mutilated in his shower, his face like a glove that had been pulled, the upper part, in particular beaten almost beyond recognition. It appears as though Stephen was robbed as his laptop was stolen along with his wallet and credit cards. Helen Walker thinks the crime might have been a lovers' tiff, but Will Grayson is pretty sure that Stephen could have been murdered by a bit of "rough trade." Perhaps Bryan had gone out cruising, picked up some bloke, bought him home, and "things turned nasty around act four." In the crucial first early days of the investigation the first character to entail suspicion is Bryan's on-again, off-again boyfriend Mark McKusick. Mark hadn't seen Stephen for a few weeks after they'd had a falling out, at least a month before his death. At first Mark is appalled at the tragedy even as collapses on the floor in the interrogation office and wails in pain, hitting himself across the face in anguish. Both Helen and Will are convinced that Mark is lying or play-acting, perhaps even selling them a bill of goods. He's the only sensible suspect, the motive being rejection, Bryan calling a halt to the relationship because of the accompanying issues of fidelity. House-to-house enquiries yield little about Bryan's movements in the days before. Even more puzzling is that after initial conversations with Bryan's former colleagues, Will and Helen finds that although he was not yet all that well-known, Bryan had been generally liked and respected. Then Stephen's girlfriend Lesley Scarman arrives on the scene just back from New Zealand. An intrepid and fearless reporter from BBC radio Nottingham, Lesley is determined to unveil the truth behind her brother's murder, not once believing that her Stephen would go out cruising and looking for casual sex. Leslie is anxious to learn of the progress, if any, that Will and Helen are making with the case. At this stage in the s

Past shadows

The murdered body of a gay academic is found in his own shower, savagely beaten and almost unrecognizable. The police start an investigation with detectives Will Grayson and Helen Walker as the leads and they naturally home straight in on the victim's former lover, whom they question at length but fail in making any connection with the crime. The area where the man lived is home to a number of homophobic thugs, all of whom have taken part in random and often mistaken bashings on anyone they choose. It's an ugly situation, made uglier by the poverty, ignorance and hooliganism of the East Midlands at that time. Helen herself is attacked and hospitalised while Will is left to try to make some kind of connection with the fact that the murder victim was attempting to write the life story of a former 50's movie star and getting no cooperation from her remaining family, only threats from the bully boy husband of her grandaughter. There are some very dark sides to this story which was very well written and which would hold the reader's interest, right to the end.