A Blake Harte Mystery, Book 8 - Touch

Author Robert Innes just never ceases to amaze me.  One "impossible" murder mystery after another, and the man never runs out of ideas!  A part of me wonders if we should be concerned that someone is able to craft murders in such a way that they are nearly impossible to figure out!  (That's a joke, if you hadn't guessed!)  In any event, his exceptional plotting and wonderfully written characters are what keep me coming back for more of Blake Harte and his countryside murder mysteries!

Touch is book eight in the series and features a story that centers around the local football games (and not "football" in the American sense of the word, but football as it is played in England - what we refer to as soccer here in the States).  I was an avid fan of the British television show Footballers' Wives, and even its short-lived spin-off series, even though I have never been, and never will be, a fan of sports.  That being said, my watching of Footballers' Wives did give me a small amount of knowledge about British football, so reading this story wasn't quite as foreign as I might have expected it to be.  Of course, it probably helped that Blake Harte has just as little interest in sports as I do, so it certainly made me identify with the Detective Sergeant on a whole new level.

 

This time around, the star footballer for the Harmschapel FC (which it never really says in the book what "FC" means - but looking it up online, I'm guessing it means "Football Club"?), is murdered on the football field - only thing is, he was completely alone on the side of the field, no one was near him, and it appears his side was slashed open with a knife of some sort.  So, how in the world does a person get knifed and killed in front of hundreds, if not thousands, of spectators, and no one saw a thing?  In fact, Harte and his team get video footage which reveals there was absolutely no one around Scott Jennings when he collapsed on the field and died!  Obviously, it's up to Detective Sergeant Harte to figure it out and bring the killer to justice.

But then another young man is killed in the team manager's office, a blunt blow to the head.  No one was said to have been in the room with him, and a teammate was outside in the hall when it happened.  So, how in the world did a second body turn up in an impossible situation?

One thing I like about Innes' writing is that he never beats around the bush.  He doesn't waste time with unnecessary sidebars or scenes that are unrelated to the tale at hand.  He provides a good build up, giving the reader just enough information about the characters involved so that you have a grasp on them all (or you think you do!), and then, BAM!  A murder happens, the manner in which the person is killed seems impossible, and you are left to wonder how Harte will solve this one.  Now, I will admit, in this story, there are a few things that happen and people say that make it a bit easier to figures some things out (although I was definitely led in the direction about one of the characters, who I was starting to believe was the killer, but turned out he definitely was not!); however, Innes kept enough twists coming that the ultimate revelations were a great surprise.

And, as if two murders were not enough, Innes delves a little bit more into Harte's past with a recurring dream he is having, as well as the lingering concerns regarding his partner's almost liason with their landlady's son.  And the book ends with a rather interesting cliffhanger of sorts, which I can only assume is a prelude to the next mystery (or perhaps the start of a build-up to the 10th mystery, which is named simply enough Harte).  In either event, I look forward to what Innes has in store!

RATING:  10 bloody strips of gauze out of 10 for enhancing the mystery genre as a whole with such intricately plotted crimes that keep the reader guessing up to the very end!