Cold in Hand by John Harvey is the 11th book in his Charlie Resnick series and some time has passed in the timing of the story. Charlie is getting ever closer to retirement age and is beginning to think and make plans for the event. He sees no great change as his life partner, Lynn Kellogg is quite a bit younger than him and still has her police career in front of her. Charlie and Lynn, who used to work together, now live together in a relationship that both are very happy in.

The first half of the book deals with how Lynn, stepping between two fighting teens, comes into the line of a bullet. Luckily she was wearing her safety vest, but one of the girls dies from her wounds. While Lynn is sidelined and recovering, Charlie is asked to work this case and help find who the shooter was, and who was actually being targeted - Lynn or the teen girl. While this case is on-going Lynn returns to work and gets more deeply involved in another of her murder cases. This one concerns a massage worker who had her throat slit in a sleazy parlour. This case involves some very nasty characters, Serbians, who also are gun runners. Lynn’s top priority is to protect the witnesses in this case, but then the trial is postponed and the suspect is given bail on the direction of Stuart Daines of the Serious Organized Crime Agency who warns Lynn off and obviously wants these criminals on the street so his gun-running case will gain traction.

As always, John Harvey excels in his gritty plotting. His eye for the details of police politics and his ability to deliver stories that seem to have come right from newspaper headlines bring a sense of reality to his police procedurals. In Cold in Hand, we also see Charlie at his lowest which helps to develop this well crafted character even further. I know the next book is the last in the series and I am both looking forward to the read and dreading the end of this favourite series. ( )

Cold in Hand is the purported next to last book with Charlie Resnick as a detective. As written in previous reviews, Harvey's depiction of Resnick only gets better with each novel.

One mistake too many authors make when creating villains is making them too over the top and unbelievable. To me, the most effective villains are those that are the most believable when it comes to accepting the particular villain actually could exist and most of these archetypes are made up of more or less regular malevolent characteristics and lacking in superhuman qualities.

In Cold in Heart, Harvey has done just that and then son.

I don't want to reveal much more of this particular novel, but like other Harvey novels, there are multiple threads that separated, then are woven back together again.

Oh, and those that decide to read these novels, you MUST start at the first one and go forward. Harvey is very good at maintaining his characters through his novels and to pick up midstream will certainly entail character "spoilers" for the reader. Also, through the series, if one does read the novels in order, then the impact in the changes of the lives of the characters will resonate more with the reader. ( )

would give 3.25 stars if I could. ( )

If you loved the original series and it's ending, then I would not read this. It's a good enough book, but not necessary. A bit like a band getting back together after a long split, it's never as good as the first time. ( )

This is an engrossing mystery, fairly dark, by one of my favorite authors.

Resnick, getting on toward retirement and just as non-conforming as always, has established a stable, loving relationship of the live-in variety with a younger officer on the force.

All is lovely until she becomes involved in the investigation of a murder at a "sauna", a/k/a/ massage parlor.

What happens next changes Resnick's life forever.

Full of the usual red herrings, conflict with authority and non-conformist activities, this is an excellent mystery in the series.