Book Review: Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffiths
By Doreen Sheridan
January 30, 2023
Of all the Elly Griffiths novels I’ve read and enjoyed, her Harbinder Kaur books are by far my favorite so far. Bleeding Heart Yard is the third in this not-a-series, as Harbinder is promoted to Detective Inspector and transferred to London from her relatively sleepy beachside home.
It’s a sea change for her, with everyone back in Sussex pleased for her but also aggravatingly solicitous. This, of course, includes her soon-to-be ex-partner Neil, whom Harbinder has viewed with both affection and exasperation throughout their professional relationship:
‘I wouldn’t live in London,’ said Neil, who had kindly offered to drive the van.
‘Why?’ said Harbinder. ‘Too many brown people for you?’
‘No,’ said Neil patiently. ‘Too much crime.’
‘We’re police officers,’ said Harbinder, already terrified by the traffic on the South Circular. ‘We love crime.’
But she knew what he meant. London equals serious crime. Not just murder, which could be disappointingly mundane, but drugs, racketeering, gangs, human trafficking. The very worst of human nature, thought Harbinder, with a not unpleasurable shiver, as the van passed several boarded-up shops and a pub called Dr. Crippen’s.
As Harbinder is adjusting to life in the capital, with new coworkers and new flatmates, she catches a startlingly prominent case. Right-wing MP Garfield Rice has been found dead in the toilets of his former secondary school during a 21st anniversary reunion celebration. At first, Harbinder is pleased that one of her own Detective Sergeants, Cassie Fitzherbert, is already there, having been in the same class at Manor Park as Garfield. After his body is discovered, Cassie quickly and calmly takes control of the situation, preserving the scene and keeping the possible witnesses (and suspects) sequestered. Unfortunately, it soon becomes clear that she’s too personally involved with the people they’re investigating to be allowed to stay on the case.
Cassie graciously accepts being benched for the duration of the investigation, but for reasons beyond Harbinder’s imagining. Over two decades ago, Cassie and her friends, including Garfield, were involved in the murder of a fellow classmate. They were only supposed to scare the victim, but he died and the aftermath has lingered long and strangely in Cassie’s head:
The actual murder was so long ago that it genuinely seemed to have happened to someone else. I suppose we all think of our eighteen-year-old selves as different people, but I could honestly look at pictures of the blonde, smiling girl and not recognise her. What did she think, who did she love, what music did she listen to? I simply couldn’t remember. Dissociation is a word I remember from my psychology degree. I think I once wrote the definition on a cue card. ‘A mental process where a person disconnects from their thoughts and feelings…often linked to trauma in childhood.’ But I never thought that it was possible to live so happily with this condition. Who was the girl in the school photos? Nothing to do with me.
Cassie knows that Garfield’s death threatens to expose what she’s done, even on the off chance that his murder has nothing to do with what they did as teens. Part of why she became a police officer, after all, is to keep her hand on the pulse of any investigations should her crime ever come to light. What will she do and how far will she go now that she finally risks exposure, even as Harbinder and the rest of her colleagues get closer and closer to the truth?
This multiple point-of-view mystery was deeply engrossing, with Harbinder’s rather more ironic voice neatly balancing out the narratives of both Cassie and another former Manor Park student, Anna. While Cassie is tense with the expectation of discovery, Anna is genuinely surprised to learn that Garfield’s death might have something to do with their classmate’s over two decades prior, especially after further conversations with her friends, who challenge her own recollection of events. The fungibility of memory is an important theme in this novel, as our main characters reflect on the stark contrast between what they’ve always believed and what they learn, over the course of the book, to be true.
Ms. Griffiths tempers any brooding introspection with both humor and romance, developing the personal lives of our characters in absorbing and appropriate ways. It was also super nice to revisit some of Harbinder’s old friends, who appear here in charming if all-too-brief cameos. I look forward to being able to spend much more time with all of them in future books.
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