‘Do No Harm’ by Judith Cutler

Published by Joffe Books,
20 May 2024.
ISBN: 978-1-83526589-5 (PB)
Originally Published
18 January 2007 as
Cold Pursuit.

Chief Superintendent Fran Harman is considering several job offers as she prepares to retire from a successful career in the Kent Constabulary. After thirty years she is looking forward to fresh challenges including spending more time with her new partner. Then she gets a call from the Chief Constable and her planned departure is put on ice. Detective Chief Superintendent Henson, with whom Fran had a strained working relationship during the first book of the series, is seriously ill in hospital.  Henson’s investigation into a spate of indecent assaults on young women requires Fran’s expertise to oversee the enquiry and she agrees to mentor her talented friend and colleague Detective Chief Inspector Jill Tanner. For good measure, the Chief also tasks the two women with the responsibility of addressing a spate of so-called “happy slapping” assaults that are being filmed and posted online.  Fran soon finds herself once more confronting violent behaviour on the increasingly lawless streets of Kent.

Meanwhile, the armchair critics working for the press are keen to exploit the unsolved crimes for sensational headlines that criticise law enforcement officers.  One such reporter is Dilly Pound. She is new to Kent and still cutting her teeth as a journalist. When she confronts Fran at a press briefing it quickly becomes apparent that there is a leak in the department.  Fran is furious and the team can do without heightened anxiety within the community.  Fran also senses that there is something else worrying the reporter, and she’s not wrong! Jill, too, is having to contend with challenges she could well do without as some members of her team clearly regard domestic violence as less serious than other forms of assault. 

The book’s narrative is rich with intertwined plots that reveal the separate investigations as well as the personal and professional lives of the two female detectives and journalist Dilly Pound. The interconnected experiences of the three women are fascinating as they juggle high profile jobs whilst negotiating the highs and lows of their relationships.  Fran and Mark are still in the early stages of their romance and are working out how to manage the time they spend in each of their still separate homes. Jill is coping with two teenagers and a sometimes less than supportive partner.  Dilly’s issues prove to be even more complicated.  The contest between the private and professional lives of the three women never distracts from the criminal thriller at the heart of the book; quite the contrary, it provides a highly realistic and engrossing context within which professional women in the early years of the twenty-first century were still negotiating their way within a workplace that was still predominately male.

Do No Harm is the second in Judith Cutler’s Fran Harman’s Mysteries series, it works perfectly well as a stand-alone.  Previously published as Cold Pursuit, Do No Harm is a compelling thriller that is witty and captivating with a dash of romance.  A great read.
------
Reviewer: Dot Marshall-Gent

Judith Cutler was born in the Black Country, just outside Birmingham, later moving to the Birmingham suburb of Harborne. Judith started writing while she was at the then Oldbury Grammar School, winning the Critical Quarterly Short Story prize with the second story she wrote. She subsequently read English at university. It was an attack of chickenpox caught from her son that kick-started her writing career. One way of dealing with the itch was to hold a pencil in one hand, a block of paper in the other - and so she wrote her first novel. This eventually appeared in a much-revised version as Coming Alive, published by Severn House. Judith has eight series. The first two featured amateur sleuth Sophie Rivers (10 books) and Detective Sergeant Kate Power (6 Books). Then came Josie Wells, a middle-aged woman with a quick tongue, and a love of good food, there are two books, The Food Detective and The Chinese Takeout. The Lina Townsend books are set in the world of antiques and there are seven books in this series. There are three books featuring Tobias Campion set in the Regency period, and her series featuring Chief Superintendent Fran Harman (6 books), and Jodie Welsh, Rector’s wife and amateur sleuth. Her more recently a series feature a head teacher Jane Cowan (3 books). Judith has also written three standalone’s Staging Death, Scar Tissue, and Death In Elysium. Her new series is set in Victorian times featuring Matthew Rowsley. Death’s Long Shadow is the third book in this series. 

 http://www.judithcutler.com

Dot Marshall-Gent worked in the emergency services for twenty years first as a police officer, then as a paramedic and finally as a fire control officer before graduating from King’s College, London as a teacher of English in her mid-forties.  She completed a M.A. in Special and Inclusive Education at the Institute of Education, London and now teaches part-time and writes mainly about educational issues.  Dot sings jazz and country music and plays guitar, banjo and piano as well as being addicted to reading mystery and crime fiction.