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DS Jimmy Suttle #2
Touching Distance
A sniper is turning the quiet Devon countryside into a killing ground. Jimmy Suttle is facing a case that could end his career. And his life.
Three unrelated, random killings. Or something much, much worse? Graham Hurely's new crime thriller unleashes a serial killer; combining Hurley's talent for ultra-realistic, character driven police-procedurals with a plot powered by an explosive ticking clock and kicking his books into a new realm of tension and fear.
Jimmy Suttle has barely got his feet under the desk at his new job. Having flown in the face of his superiors on his first big case he now finds himself trying to track down a random, hugely skilled killer before another innocent dies and before the media tear the force apart.
Full of a sense of place, sensitive to the deep rooted agonies of a policeman alone and facing disaster, and close to, and with a chilling understanding of the motivations of the killer this is a bravura piece of crime fiction that will secure Hurley's reputation and win new readers.
Three unrelated, random killings. Or something much, much worse? Graham Hurely's new crime thriller unleashes a serial killer; combining Hurley's talent for ultra-realistic, character driven police-procedurals with a plot powered by an explosive ticking clock and kicking his books into a new realm of tension and fear.
Jimmy Suttle has barely got his feet under the desk at his new job. Having flown in the face of his superiors on his first big case he now finds himself trying to track down a random, hugely skilled killer before another innocent dies and before the media tear the force apart.
Full of a sense of place, sensitive to the deep rooted agonies of a policeman alone and facing disaster, and close to, and with a chilling understanding of the motivations of the killer this is a bravura piece of crime fiction that will secure Hurley's reputation and win new readers.
340 pages, Hardcover
First published November 21, 2013
19 people are currently reading
94 people want to read
About the author
Graham Hurley
68 books150 followersGraham Hurley was born November, 1946 in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex. His seaside childhood was punctuated by football, swimming, afternoons on the dodgems, run-ins with the police, multiple raids on the local library - plus near-total immersion in English post-war movies.
Directed and produced documentaries for ITV through two decades, winning a number of national and international awards. Launched a writing career on the back of a six-part drama commission for ITV: "Rules of Engagement". Left TV and became full time writer in 1991.
Authored nine stand-alone thrillers plus "Airshow", a fly-on-the-wall novel-length piece of reportage, before accepting Orion invitation to become a crime writer. Drew gleefully on home-town Portsmouth (“Pompey”) as the basis for an on-going series featuring D/I Joe Faraday and D/C Paul Winter.
Contributed five years of personal columns to the Portsmouth News, penned a number of plays and dramatic monologues for local production (including the city’s millenium celebration, "Willoughby and Son"), then decamped to Devon for a more considered take on Pompey low-life.
The Faraday series came to an end after 12 books. Healthy sales at home and abroad, plus mega-successful French TV adaptations, tempted Orion to commission a spin-off series, set in the West Country, featuring D/S Jimmy Suttle.
Launch title - "Western Approaches" - published 2012. "Touching Distance" to hit the bookstores next month (21st November).
Has recently self-published a number of titles on Kindle including "Strictly No Flowers" (a dark take on crime fiction), "Estuary" (a deeply personal memoir) and "Backstory" (how and why he came to write the Faraday series).
Married to the delectable Lin. Three grown-up sons (Tom, Jack and Woody). Plus corking grandson Dylan.
You're very welcome to contact Graham through his website: www.grahamhurley.co.uk
Or direct on seasidepictures@btinternet.com.
Series:
* D.I. Joe Faraday
Directed and produced documentaries for ITV through two decades, winning a number of national and international awards. Launched a writing career on the back of a six-part drama commission for ITV: "Rules of Engagement". Left TV and became full time writer in 1991.
Authored nine stand-alone thrillers plus "Airshow", a fly-on-the-wall novel-length piece of reportage, before accepting Orion invitation to become a crime writer. Drew gleefully on home-town Portsmouth (“Pompey”) as the basis for an on-going series featuring D/I Joe Faraday and D/C Paul Winter.
Contributed five years of personal columns to the Portsmouth News, penned a number of plays and dramatic monologues for local production (including the city’s millenium celebration, "Willoughby and Son"), then decamped to Devon for a more considered take on Pompey low-life.
The Faraday series came to an end after 12 books. Healthy sales at home and abroad, plus mega-successful French TV adaptations, tempted Orion to commission a spin-off series, set in the West Country, featuring D/S Jimmy Suttle.
Launch title - "Western Approaches" - published 2012. "Touching Distance" to hit the bookstores next month (21st November).
Has recently self-published a number of titles on Kindle including "Strictly No Flowers" (a dark take on crime fiction), "Estuary" (a deeply personal memoir) and "Backstory" (how and why he came to write the Faraday series).
Married to the delectable Lin. Three grown-up sons (Tom, Jack and Woody). Plus corking grandson Dylan.
You're very welcome to contact Graham through his website: www.grahamhurley.co.uk
Or direct on seasidepictures@btinternet.com.
Series:
* D.I. Joe Faraday
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
January 23, 2019
Just love a bit of UK police procedure
April 26, 2018
So, in the first book, I was annoyed by how relentlessly selfish and American-style good looking every character (well, except the victim, who was not attractive, so, I suppose, deserved to die) was. I was also annoyed by the whole crime becoming personal to the detective scenario that is way too common in books and just absolutely grates on my nerves. But...at least it didn't involve a serial killer, so that was a plus. And, Hurley can write without grammatical errors, which seems to be less and less common these days, so...I figured I would try book 2.
Ugh. Even MORE good looking, super self-centered characters. Not-yet-divorced Mothers who are too busy falling in love (and, of course, into bed) with a man they met 10 minutes ago to have any time for offspring. Men who have a wedding planned for later in the week, but who cannot keep their members in their pants when a willing wife of someone else is willing to play love interest for a weekend.
I'm not married, myself, but that's partly because I have respect for promises and don't make any I can't keep. I guess that's old fashioned. And it made me loathe the people in this book. I can't feel any more sympathy for the wronged husband in the aforementioned scenario, because he was the one f---ing (that's what they fondly call it - which is jarring in a book that has little profanity) around in the last book.
And all of that might have been bearable had the characters had any redeeming qualities, but, as far as I could see, they did not. They are selfish, impulsive, whiny...oh, my god! They are the essence of the so-named millennials!! Is this the future of literature?! Stories about loathsome people doing loathsome things while, on the periphery, doing some mediocre police work? AND the crime intruded into the detective's life AGAIN!!!!!
Why does none of this seem to bother anyone else?
Ugh. Even MORE good looking, super self-centered characters. Not-yet-divorced Mothers who are too busy falling in love (and, of course, into bed) with a man they met 10 minutes ago to have any time for offspring. Men who have a wedding planned for later in the week, but who cannot keep their members in their pants when a willing wife of someone else is willing to play love interest for a weekend.
I'm not married, myself, but that's partly because I have respect for promises and don't make any I can't keep. I guess that's old fashioned. And it made me loathe the people in this book. I can't feel any more sympathy for the wronged husband in the aforementioned scenario, because he was the one f---ing (that's what they fondly call it - which is jarring in a book that has little profanity) around in the last book.
And all of that might have been bearable had the characters had any redeeming qualities, but, as far as I could see, they did not. They are selfish, impulsive, whiny...oh, my god! They are the essence of the so-named millennials!! Is this the future of literature?! Stories about loathsome people doing loathsome things while, on the periphery, doing some mediocre police work? AND the crime intruded into the detective's life AGAIN!!!!!
Why does none of this seem to bother anyone else?
January 16, 2014
I am a great Hurley fan, having read all the Joe Faraday books and the first Jimmy Suttle. This offering has the same attention to detail, careful plot and slowly increasing tension that I have come to expect. The characters continue to grow, some go and new ones arrive... I hope Hurley continues to write for a long long time. Highly recommended.
February 12, 2014
This book was probably between a three and four star rating. I miss the richness of Paul Winter and Joe Faraday. The two Suttle books aren't quite hitting the same mark. Felt like I was being rushed through the plot a bit.
January 12, 2014
Very entertaining read, a nice way of tying the threads together. Very nice to read a book set in the locality of Devon and some nice and humorous sections
March 2, 2014
I am a great fan of Graham Hurley, and love the way he is developing Jimmy Suttle's character in this new series.
August 13, 2018
Four and a half stars from me. A man is shot dead in his car and DS Suttle investigates, in the rainy West Country, away from Portsmouth. I have a gap in my reading after Faraday's death and I seem to have missed a lot, but we get a recap of Suttle and his journalist wife Lizzie's marriage dissolving in rural remote living. Not a peep about Paul Winter so maybe that thread has ended too.
Another shooting follows and it's soon apparent that a contract killer is around, someone good with a rifle. Oddly enough Lizzie chooses that moment to start dating an Army sniper. How coincidental. We get a lot of information about one in six UK soldiers being killed or maimed in Afghanistan, since Hurley has become very political of late.
What Hurley does not do well is children and young people. This book technically contains two but they are under four and neither gets a decent scene. They are the daughter that neither Suttle nor his wife wants to care for, Lizzie proving herself to be the most self obsessed selfish young mother of anyone who isn't on drugs. Hurley doesn't write her convincingly because she should want the best for her child, not to dump the child on gran for weeks at a time. And the two year old boy who was in the car with his shot father, is not seen nor heard of, just that there was a custody battle over him. Nobody thinks of asking the boy if he saw anything or recognised anyone - a small child is an unreliable witness and should not be distressed, but a trained person would be able to ask the boy, who would at that age be perfectly capable of saying if a motorbike stopped the car, or someone dressed as a policeman which is the obvious guess, or if it was someone he recognised. He's probably babbling all this information to the nurses, yet the cops never even go to see him. Hurley just does not write children into his books, for all that southwest England is full of them.
The end is highly dramatised but it's fiction, in a nicely written setting with many characters, and the whole is a decent, well-worked investigation.
This is an unbiased review.
Another shooting follows and it's soon apparent that a contract killer is around, someone good with a rifle. Oddly enough Lizzie chooses that moment to start dating an Army sniper. How coincidental. We get a lot of information about one in six UK soldiers being killed or maimed in Afghanistan, since Hurley has become very political of late.
What Hurley does not do well is children and young people. This book technically contains two but they are under four and neither gets a decent scene. They are the daughter that neither Suttle nor his wife wants to care for, Lizzie proving herself to be the most self obsessed selfish young mother of anyone who isn't on drugs. Hurley doesn't write her convincingly because she should want the best for her child, not to dump the child on gran for weeks at a time. And the two year old boy who was in the car with his shot father, is not seen nor heard of, just that there was a custody battle over him. Nobody thinks of asking the boy if he saw anything or recognised anyone - a small child is an unreliable witness and should not be distressed, but a trained person would be able to ask the boy, who would at that age be perfectly capable of saying if a motorbike stopped the car, or someone dressed as a policeman which is the obvious guess, or if it was someone he recognised. He's probably babbling all this information to the nurses, yet the cops never even go to see him. Hurley just does not write children into his books, for all that southwest England is full of them.
The end is highly dramatised but it's fiction, in a nicely written setting with many characters, and the whole is a decent, well-worked investigation.
This is an unbiased review.
June 25, 2019
Predictable and Flawed.
The book is about serial killings where victims are totally random. Detective Shuttle, who is having his own personal battles is tasked to solve this case. The book also talks about the war in Afghan and its affect on the troops and why the war is probably not a good idea. The book is very predictable and characters have some flaws in them which were didnot make any sense. There seemed to be forced linkages created in the story just to keep the story going.The book is worth reading nonetheless but as it reached the end it left me with a few questions.
The book is about serial killings where victims are totally random. Detective Shuttle, who is having his own personal battles is tasked to solve this case. The book also talks about the war in Afghan and its affect on the troops and why the war is probably not a good idea. The book is very predictable and characters have some flaws in them which were didnot make any sense. There seemed to be forced linkages created in the story just to keep the story going.The book is worth reading nonetheless but as it reached the end it left me with a few questions.
April 17, 2022
Well this was far better than the first D.S Suttle book. So much so that I thought I would read the following books as have been impressed by all his preceeding Faraday/Winter novels.
I was hooked by about half way through and had to read it at any spare moment I found!
If the next two in the Jimmey Suttle books are as good I will be most surprized, thank you Mr Hurley for these books
I was hooked by about half way through and had to read it at any spare moment I found!
If the next two in the Jimmey Suttle books are as good I will be most surprized, thank you Mr Hurley for these books
April 9, 2018
With three murders under investigation, there are a lot of characters to track, but I enjoyed the development of Jimmy’s character and that of his semi-estranged wife Lizzie. Interesting sidelights on the war in Afghanistan and on post traumatic stress.
August 5, 2021
Story relies heavily on the Afghan conflict so much currently in the news. Focuses on Jimmy fightingt
crime in Devon and his estranged wife following a story from Portsmouth. Fast paced and thought provoking.
crime in Devon and his estranged wife following a story from Portsmouth. Fast paced and thought provoking.
September 7, 2018
Better than the first of the series, complex, excellent!
June 10, 2019
I liked this book, although found it slow and hard work at times.
October 5, 2015
This is the first Graham Hurley book I've read in which Joe Faraday isn't the hero. Instead, it's former bit-parter DI Jimmy Suttle. He's taken a job in the West Country and living out in the sticks has cause his marriage to break down just before the story opens.
Here is a fast-paced thriller in which three apparently unconnected killings do have in some way to be linked. Here is the story of a still-married couple as they get used to living their separate lives, and of Jimmy's friendship with his lodger that goes distressingly wrong. It's a really engaging fast-paced police procedural with added human interest. A good read.
Here is a fast-paced thriller in which three apparently unconnected killings do have in some way to be linked. Here is the story of a still-married couple as they get used to living their separate lives, and of Jimmy's friendship with his lodger that goes distressingly wrong. It's a really engaging fast-paced police procedural with added human interest. A good read.
August 20, 2016
This is really an exceptionally good police procedural. Jim Suttle as a character is a spin off from the author's character Joe Faraday. However, Suttle has moved from Portsmouth to Devon. In this book he becomes involved in hunts to find a sniper who as the book progresses become responsible for the deaths of three individuals. The author pulls off the blinder of a red herring. There was I, thinking cockily, I know who dunnit. But no way. I was totally off beam. Perhaps the end was just a tad cheesy, but none the worse for that. Excellent read
September 28, 2015
As always the author delivers. I am enjoying the slow growth of Jimmy Sutcliffe and I hope to learn more about his sidekick. I do miss Paul Winter but understand completely why the need to move on. The police procedural stuff is awesome. I like the two intertwining stories of Jimmy & Lizzie (although my tiny critique is that Lizzie still isn't a fully developed enough character). I look forward to more...
March 7, 2015
Thoroughly enjoyed this book. I'm a big Graham Hurley fan, and have enjoyed all of his books. I really liked the last 30 or so pages, and again a few questions left unanswered ready for the next book. Suttle and Golding are becoming a ptent force to match that of Faraday and Winter. I just love this author's style.
February 2, 2014
Excellent
June 22, 2014
a cracking good read.
January 14, 2015
Fact-packed but balanced by equal strength in emotional intelligence. I really cared about these characters. Excellent.
October 31, 2015
A page turner. Suttle has become a better developed character and I continue to enjoy Hurley's writing.
July 1, 2016
Excellent.... it will be featured in my upcoming blog on the novels of Graham Hurley, entitled Faraday's Law
July 2, 2016
I thought this was a lot better than the first book in the Jimmy Suttle series. However, I did find myself a bit confused about the suspects near the end.
January 19, 2017
A solid, well-written complex plot full of tension and human interest, and thoroughly entertaining.
October 16, 2021
An interesting police drama.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews