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THE FINAL ANALYSIS
At first there were five identical murders, the bodies eviscerated and the organs playfully distributed around. Beverly Wharton had been sure that the guilty man was Melkior Pendred—an autistic and highly skilled mortuary assistant—but her colleague, Sergeant Homer, had always thought she had caught the wrong man and it was his twin, Martin, who was responsible.
With Melkior dying in prison, a sixth, apparently identical murder gives Homer—now a chief inspector—the perfect chance to settle a few scores. Martin Pendred is arrested but then released on a technicality after the intervention of his solicitor, Helena Flemming. Then he disappears.
Another murder occurs and the hunt for Martin Pendred becomes intense. Beverly Wharton—fearing for her career if it is shown Melkior Pendred was innocent— calls on John Eisenmenger to help her. He had been the pathologist on the original murders and soon spots slight differences of technique between present and past murders. And when a fellow pathologist is murdered, Eisenmenger begins to guess what is going on.
Then Helena disappears, kidnapped by Martin Pendred, and while Eisenmenger desperately searches for her he discovers the final piece of evidence that reveals just who is behind the latest murders.
ISBN: 1845290593
(Constable, May 2005 London. June 2005, New York)
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THE
SILENT SLEEP OF THE DYING
Mark Hartmann, a consultant pathologist, is married to a barrister and the son-in-law of a judge. His secret vice is compulsive gambling, and mounting debts are starting to threaten his marriage. When he is asked to perform an autopsy on Millicent Sweet, a laboratory assistant, it seems a case like any other. Sweet was only twenty-two when she died of cancer. His initial findings are anything but typical, though, for she appears to have died of several different, aggressive tumors. Before he can discuss this with his colleagues, he is called away to a conference in Scotland, where he ends up sleeping with one of the sales reps. This action results in blackmail by a pharmaceutical company, which has videoed Hartmann's excesses. They threaten to send the video to Hartmann's wife-unless he falsifies his report on Sweet's death. But they are not the only people interested in this. Millicent's father, convinced his daughter's death is the result of a laboratory accident, has contacted lawyer Helena Flemming. When Helena's partner, John Eisenmenger, a forensic pathologist, looks into the case, he not only uncovers Hartmann's original autopsy and subsequent deception, but is launched into the perilous midst of an even greater lie.
ISBN: 1841197017
Constable and Robinson 2004
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The second appearance of John Eisenmenger and Helena Flemming and I wanted to do something slightly different. (Actually, that is not entirely true because I had an old plot that I wanted to use and this seemed like a good cause.) So this time it’s not a whodunnit but a what-the-hell-is-going-on? I quite like scientific thrillers (I have another ingenious way of killing people which appears in a rare and difficult to obtain novel called The Devil’s Kiss, which I published in the states under the pseudonym of Paul Marsden) and wanted to show off Eisenmenger’s scientific background. Pathologists are special in medicine because they bridge more than any other medical speciality the two worlds of science and medicine.
It’s a fairly conventional thriller, no hidden meanings; everything is either black or white with few greys. As such, it is pure fantasy.
A
FEAST OF CARRION
Once a respected forensic pathologist, the ghosts of John Eisenmenger’s last case have haunted him throughout his current position at St. Benjamin's Medical School. Unfortunately for him, a student's brutal murder brings his professional and personal history back to the forefront. Although the slaying is conveniently resolved as the handiwork of the museum's assistant curator -- a drug dealer and former rapist who quickly kills himself in jail -- solicitor Helena Flemming has other ideas. Acting on behalf of the dead suspect's family, she first enlists Eisenmenger to take a look at the victim's autopsy report, then pleads with him to render a second opinion -- after he's performed an additional autopsy. As it happens, the doctor's findings are completely at odds with the original report, and a can of worms that had been thought closed for good springs open with a vengeance. It seems the young woman student's murderer is still out there, waiting to be found.
ISBN: 1841199109 (hardback)
Constable and Robinson, May 2003
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ISBN: 1841199109 (paperback)
Constable and Robinson July 2005.
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It’s a first novel, of course and has numerous flaws, although most of the criticisms levelled against it were critical of the style rather than pointing out actual errors. Write what you know about – well of course, but such advice (in my case at least) is liable to result in a great deal of strong stuff. At least the reader can draw comfort from the fact that the details are factual. It may not be nice but it really is how it is done.
I wanted to write a whodunnit but I didn’t want to follow in the tradition of Agatha Christie et al. For one thing, murders are unpleasant and they have powerful effects on everyone involved. They are not parlour games. Interestingly, though, they are also sources of employment and remuneration to a great many people, a point I tried to make. Another point I wanted to emphasise was that as Oscar Wilde said, the truth is rarely pure and never simple. Nor is it a single discrete entity, a unique and unchanging fact.
Just who did kill Nikki Exner?
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Back to the whodunnit and, what is more, a foray into serial killer world. Serial killers are a wonderful gift to the crime writer because they are, essentially, monsters and are therefore a faint memory of folklore and fairy tale. The bogeyman, the Gollum, the Greene Knight. I’m afraid I couldn’t resist giving my murderer(s) peculiar names, nor giving them psychiatric conditions. Please believe me when I say that I am quite well aware that those with autistic spectrum disorder are no more likely to murder than anyone else; my perpetrators have ASD because that makes them outsiders in our wonderful all-inclusive, caring and sharing society, not because I think that they are maniacal killers. Outsiders are always shunned, always made the scapegoat, always to be feared.
Once again, though, I wanted to explore uncertainty. This world is uncertain and although it is entirely possible to write a brilliant crime novel in which there is certainty, I sort of feel that this introduces a degree of artificiality that I don’t much like. There is often doubt about a crime, whether it be with regard to why it was done at all, why it was done when it was done, or precisely who did it.