Lesley Kelly

I love books that are completely real whilst also being darkly comic.

Welcome back to the North Edinburgh Health Enforcement Team, now on their fifth outing in a fictionalised, mid-Virus-epidemic-Edinburgh. Bernard is still surprised daily by the demands of his job, (which is supposed to be about healthcare but is really a sort of police team used by their boss to try to hush up political scandals that they've been instructed to smother by their boss,) but now he's got a new boss, he hopes his work life might calm down long enough for him to go out to dinner with his girlfriend's parents. This seems like a perfectly reasonable hope, which is why long time readers know Bernard has no chance of achieving this minor success.

-- What's it about? --

Two years into a devastating pandemic, food shortages are critical. When the government introduces 'Consumable Purchase Restrictions' (AKA rationing) the population are livid, so this is a bad time for Carlotta Carmichael, Virus Minister, to lose a lorryload of luxury foodstuffs meant to feed the V8 ministers. Determined to prevent protests flaring into riots, Carmichael instructs the HET to track down the lorry and its driver - immediately.

Remarkably, this proves not just easy to do, but is almost a pleasant break from tracking down the typical health defaulters (junkies, criminals and now 'holiday defaulters' - people who have somehow acquired a beautiful golden tan whilst being too 'ill' to attend their monthly health check), until Bernard and Maitland find a dead body in the lorry... Who is she? What happened? And will Carlotta Carmichael ever allow the truth to make the newspapers?

-- What's it like? --

Wonderfully accurate and entertaining. Kelly teams completely convincing characterisation with dark humour and murky situations until yet another ending that shows Mona striding off fearlessly in pursuit of the truth while her colleagues are still confirming the final outcomes of their latest investigation.

While Maitland bemoans his own lack of involvement in the latest violent trauma to befall poor Bernard, and Bernard frets about how to tell his girlfriend that he still wants to support his pregnant wife through her pregnancy, Mona is moving on to uncover The Truth about the virus, whatever that might be. Oh and Carole is still suing the HET after they decided to invoke the clause that means only your own death is a lawful excuse to stop turning up to work.

-- Final thoughts --

I typically prefer stories where we don't learn a lot about the background of the investigating team as I like the investigation to be the focus, but here the focus is really on the characters and the spot on depiction of the politicking surrounding the virus. The investigation is resolved as far as it is possible to do so, but like so many of these stories, there's a tension between what the HET are allowed, even encouraged, to find out, and what they are actually allowed to share, which tends to lead to a similar feeling of not-quite-closure - which may be why stories in this series tend to end with Mona running into the distance, ready to keep seeking The Truth, which is the wider story arc encompassing the Health of Strangers series.

This could be read as a standalone but would be better read in order. If you think you like the sound of this then I'm confident you'll enjoy starting with 'The Health of Strangers' and reading through the books in sequence. There is now quite a lot of recent history that Kelly needs to keep readers apprised of and so there were several brief recap paragraphs. These don't disrupt the narrative but reinforce that these are stories which would benefit from being enjoyed in the sequence in which they were written.

Many thanks to Vertebrate Publishing for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.… (mehr)

Now it was a judgement call – phone the Health Enforcement Team first or the Police? Alerting the Police to a potentially suspicious death made it their problem. Phoning it in to the office as a Health Check Violation Due to Fatality left it resting firmly in her in tray, with a tonne of attached paperwork. She walked back into the middle of the room, and looked round in search of anything that could justify her phoning her former colleagues in Police Scotland.

Set in Edinburgh in the midst of a worldwide epidemic, Mona and Bernard are part of the unpopular Health Enforcement Team, a mixed group of police and health professionals whose job is to chase up anyone who has not attended their monthly Virus Prevention Wealth Check. Their job usually involves tracking down drunkards and druggies who have missed their appointments, with the occasional discovery of a dead body, but it takes on political dimensions when a student who has missed her check-up turns out to be the daughter of a German government minister.

I have always enjoyed films and books about the plague and other epidemics, and this book approaches an epidemic from a new angle, as often stories take place as the epidemic is taking hold or once it is over, whereas in this book Mona, Bernard and their colleagues have a small but important role in an ongoing struggle against the virus. I am looking forward to reading the sequel.… (mehr)