‘No Harm, No Foul’ by Judith Cutler

Published by Joffe Books,
26 June 2024.
ISBN: 978-1-83526-676-2 (PB)
Originally Published 5 November 2013 as
Double Fault

Despite an accident that has left her lame, Detective Chief Superintendent Fran Harman is very happy in her personal life. She is living in her new home, a beautifully restored rectory, with her fiancé, Mark Turner, and looking forward to their wedding. However, her work life is more difficult: her mobility challenges are causing both pain and fatigue, and she finds it hard to work with the new Chief Constable, who appears to be more interested in pleasing his political masters by cost cutting than he is in supporting his officers in providing effective police work. Fran also finds it hard to trust the Chief Constable’s protégé, DCI Sean Murray, a Met officer who has been foisted upon her Major Crime Reviews Section. This Section is responsible for investigating ‘cold cases’, which involves checking whether new technology or other evidence means that cold cases can now be solved. Despite all these problems and the difficulties caused by redundancies, which exacerbate the chronic manpower shortages, Fran is determined not to retire until Mark has fully settled into his own retirement.

Following a breakdown, Mark has retired from his role as Assistant Chief Constable. He has spent some of his retirement nursing Fran after her accident but now, apart from acting as her chauffeur as she is still unable to drive, Mark is free to enjoy himself and is becoming much more fit as he spends his leisure time gardening and playing tennis with his newly acquired friends, the Golden Oldies, at the local tennis club. The Golden Oldies are all retired people, and they are irritated because it is the school holiday and there is a children’s club learning to play tennis under the leadership of Zac, a skilled tennis coach. The older players are grumpy because of the noise the children are making and because only half the courts are available for their use. However, all that changes when Mark notices that the youngest of the children, Zac’s daughter, Livvie, has disappeared. Zac is distraught and many of the other onlookers panic so Mark has to take command until the police officers arrive. Even after that he continues to be involved in the search, supported by many of the Golden Oldies who rise to the occasion.

Although the hunt for Livvie is the most urgent case to be investigated by the local police force and has priority, it is not the only serious crime that they have to tackle. Several skeletons have been discovered plastered into the walls of an abandoned building and it becomes evident that a number of the young people who had gone missing and were presumed to be runaways were in fact the victims of a serial killer. Because the murders occurred many years ago, the Major Crimes Review Team is tasked with tracking down the killer. To make Fran’s life even harder, the Senior Investigating Officer assigned to the case is taken seriously ill and Fran’s second-in-command, Sean Murray, has gone away for the weekend without clearing it with her. Despite the support of several excellent junior officers, Fran has a great deal to cope with chief amongst this is the fear that they will be too late to save Livvie but this is compounded by the strain of running the two major cases and her concern that the stress will have a deleterious effect on Mark’s health. This overload of responsibility increases Fran’s own health problems until it seems probable that she may have to attend her own wedding in a wheelchair.

No Harm, No Foul is the fifth book in the series featuring Fran Harmer. It is an interesting novel with engaging characters and a complex multi-strand plot that highlights the challenges of maintaining high standards of policing when the politicians are demanding financial cuts, which damages the health and well-being of the officers who are struggling to maintain a high standard of policing. This is a very enjoyable read, which I recommend.
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Reviewer: Carol Westron

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

Carol Westron is a successful author and a Creative Writing teacher.  Her crime novels are set both in contemporary and Victorian times.  Her first book The Terminal Velocity of Cats was published in 2013. Since then, she has since written 8 further mysteries. Carol recently gave an interview to Mystery People. interview

www.carolwestron.com
To read a review of Carol latest book click on the title
Death and the Dancing Snowman