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Bev Morriss #4
Hard Time
An abandoned baby… A kidnapped five-year-old… A dead police officer… And Detective Sergeant Bev Morriss thinks she’s having a hard time! Bev doesn’t do fragile and vulnerable, and struggling to cope with the aftermath of a vicious attack, she is desperate not to reveal the lurking self-doubt. But her lover has decided it’s time to move on and the guv is losing patience. And as for her new partner - think empathy of a house brick. But she can scarcely trust her own judgement, so what’s left to rely on? Just when things can’t get any worse, the death threat arrives. And the ransom note. And hard doesn’t begin to cover it.
297 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 15, 2007
2 people are currently reading
36 people want to read
About the author
Maureen Carter
37 books27 followersFormer BBC Newsnight presenter Maureen has worked extensively in newspapers, radio and television. She still freelances in the business, when she's not busy novel writing. As a journalist she's worked closely with the police, covering countless crime stories, including several murders. She's also interviewed victims and seen villains sent down.
Maureen was inspired to write Working Girls by a police pilot scheme to treat younger prostitutes as victims rather than criminals.
"It set me thinking about women on the game," she says. "What made a girl risk her health, and her life, night after night? What, if any, choice did she have? I wondered: could I combine appealing characters from this largely ignored section of society with a measure of social comment and produce an engaging and entertaining crime novel?"
Maureen was inspired to write Working Girls by a police pilot scheme to treat younger prostitutes as victims rather than criminals.
"It set me thinking about women on the game," she says. "What made a girl risk her health, and her life, night after night? What, if any, choice did she have? I wondered: could I combine appealing characters from this largely ignored section of society with a measure of social comment and produce an engaging and entertaining crime novel?"
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 4, 2008
This is the first for me by Maureen Carter, but I'll definitely be looking for more. Her detective Bev Morriss is a nice combination of tough but flawed and if I thought she got over her past trauma a little too quickly and for the wrong reason, I did like that she progressed. The plot of this one is a little complicated - kidnapped child, possible mob connection, cops being killed - but it all fit pretty well. Strong, though not perfect, police procedural.
May 22, 2010
PROTAGONIST: Detec. Sgt. Bev Morriss
SETTING: Birmingham, UK
SERIES: #4 of 4
RATING: 4.25
Detective Sergeant Bev Morriss (Birmingham, UK) is the kind of person that you want working on those hard-to-solve cases that come up in a police department. Intelligent, driven, competent—she has a way of homing in on the evidence, using both the facts and her intuition, and producing a result. But things have changed for Bev. She was brutally raped and has not been the same ever since. She hides her feelings of vulnerability under a hard crust; instead of empathizing with the victims of the crimes that she is working on, she finds that she is alienating them. And that's the last thing she wants to do when working on the case of an abducted 5-year-old boy. She needs the parents' cooperation; she feels that they know something that they aren't revealing.
Little Daniel Page was picked up from school by someone who looked almost exactly like his mother. He's been missing for days, and there haven't been any ransom demands. As you can imagine, the parents are frantic to find him. The more time that passes by, the more they disintegrate. Although Bev suspects that they are hiding something, the investigation is pretty much at a dead end until a demand is finally made. Meanwhile, Bev has gone through a few partners who have difficulty with her bristly personality. Finally, she meets her match in DS Mac Tyler, who doesn't hesitate to confront Bev when she needs it.
At the same time, Bev's superior officer, Superintendent Byford, is dealing with a puzzling case of his own. It seems that someone is targeting a group of police officers who were involved in a hit-and-run incident many years before. Nobody but Byford is aware of the link between the various deaths of this group of men; it's likely that he will be targeted as well, since he was a part of the incident. There is an attraction between Bev and Byford; it's interesting to see how this relationship develops both on and off the job.
I found HARD TIME to be a first-rate book. The procedural aspects of the various investigations in the department were very realistically portrayed. There were three major inquiries that were covered in the narrative; the Birmingham department was completely stretched. Carter did an excellent job of showing the pressures faced by the entire department, from top to bottom.
I really liked the various characters in the book, most especially Bev Morriss and Mac Tyler. As Bev's brittle façade begins to crack, you can see the proud and passionate woman that she had once been. She'll always be "Morriss the Mouth", but her usual self has fewer sharp edges than her damaged version. I did have a bit of difficulty with the slang used in the book. It wasn't incomprehensible but occasionally made me stop to figure out what was meant.
I liked the author's approach and the lead character so much that I have ordered the first 3 books in this series. I guess you could say I put my money where my mouth is!
SETTING: Birmingham, UK
SERIES: #4 of 4
RATING: 4.25
Detective Sergeant Bev Morriss (Birmingham, UK) is the kind of person that you want working on those hard-to-solve cases that come up in a police department. Intelligent, driven, competent—she has a way of homing in on the evidence, using both the facts and her intuition, and producing a result. But things have changed for Bev. She was brutally raped and has not been the same ever since. She hides her feelings of vulnerability under a hard crust; instead of empathizing with the victims of the crimes that she is working on, she finds that she is alienating them. And that's the last thing she wants to do when working on the case of an abducted 5-year-old boy. She needs the parents' cooperation; she feels that they know something that they aren't revealing.
Little Daniel Page was picked up from school by someone who looked almost exactly like his mother. He's been missing for days, and there haven't been any ransom demands. As you can imagine, the parents are frantic to find him. The more time that passes by, the more they disintegrate. Although Bev suspects that they are hiding something, the investigation is pretty much at a dead end until a demand is finally made. Meanwhile, Bev has gone through a few partners who have difficulty with her bristly personality. Finally, she meets her match in DS Mac Tyler, who doesn't hesitate to confront Bev when she needs it.
At the same time, Bev's superior officer, Superintendent Byford, is dealing with a puzzling case of his own. It seems that someone is targeting a group of police officers who were involved in a hit-and-run incident many years before. Nobody but Byford is aware of the link between the various deaths of this group of men; it's likely that he will be targeted as well, since he was a part of the incident. There is an attraction between Bev and Byford; it's interesting to see how this relationship develops both on and off the job.
I found HARD TIME to be a first-rate book. The procedural aspects of the various investigations in the department were very realistically portrayed. There were three major inquiries that were covered in the narrative; the Birmingham department was completely stretched. Carter did an excellent job of showing the pressures faced by the entire department, from top to bottom.
I really liked the various characters in the book, most especially Bev Morriss and Mac Tyler. As Bev's brittle façade begins to crack, you can see the proud and passionate woman that she had once been. She'll always be "Morriss the Mouth", but her usual self has fewer sharp edges than her damaged version. I did have a bit of difficulty with the slang used in the book. It wasn't incomprehensible but occasionally made me stop to figure out what was meant.
I liked the author's approach and the lead character so much that I have ordered the first 3 books in this series. I guess you could say I put my money where my mouth is!
July 17, 2014
I found this very gripping and looked forward to listening to it each time I picked up my MP3 player. There were some niggles: the slightly smug style with its knowing metaphors and "clever" use of language annoyed me and the typical, "I'll just go into the murderer's home alone and without having called for back-up" move. Why does every fictional detective do that? And I felt the early checking on possible suspects was very amateur. Even I would have investigated more fully and I'm no Brummie cop! However, those irritations apart, I found the plot very interesting and the characters engaging. This book certainly shows the human, fallible side of the police and how they work under difficult constraints. I've, as usual, started this series in the middle but will now look for more by the same author - particularly as we were left on a bit of a cliffhanger at the end.
September 10, 2012
Really enjoyed this book, was a fantastic read, couldn't put the book down, which was good as I was suffering insomia the night I read this!!! A riveting book, very intriguing storyline with lots going on to keep you interested. The first book I have read by this author but I will be looking out for more. I would recommend her if you like crime stories with a twist
January 10, 2015
Really enjoying this series. Not the most endearing character, Beverley somehow manages the balance between prickly and sexy right alongside that of Maverick cop.
Her personal life is something of a disaster. Gritty and realistic, just like her police image, the next phase of her story may see some of that change...... But probably not.
Her personal life is something of a disaster. Gritty and realistic, just like her police image, the next phase of her story may see some of that change...... But probably not.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews