Alison,' the woman gasped. 'My Alison's not come home.' 'Alison's your lass, is she?' PC Swindells asked, his voice deliberately calm, attempting to reassure the woman. The woman suddenly hawked violently and spat on the ground at his feet. ‘Until you show some sign of knowing what you should be looking for, that's all the help you'll get from me, mister.’” Most of the story's characters are well-drawn, though I found it hard to distinguish among the people of the village, whose interrelationships are more complicated than calculus. I sympathized with DI Bennett, whose shifty, 'cover-his-ass' boss made sure to keep his distance from the investigation, in case it went sideways. And I liked DI Clough, whose rough exterior masks a caring soul. I also found Catherine Heathcote to be bright and likable.....and an excellent researcher (I imagine she mimics the author's skills in this area. LOL) I love Lee Ingleby who plays George. I first encountered Lee in the production of ' Inspector George Gently' . The rest of the cast is just great. My bone of contention is the photos supposedly representing a13year old girl. The photos looked like a female in her late 20's not a young vulnerable teenager.

a b Calvin, Jean (1816). Institutes of the Christian Religion, Volume 3 (H. Howe reprinted.). Harvard University. p.195. While I had a sense of what was troubling George Bennett, and the direction the story was heading, the film was effective in keeping me guessing at the details until nearly the end. It did so, however, in large part because of the improbability of its resolution. Now, I don't wish to exaggerate this point: I have encountered stories and resolutions that I found equally, if not more, improbable in any number of episodes of highly-regarded British mystery series. (Pushing the improbability envelope seems to be the norm in mystery/police-procedural dramas these days.) On a specially prepared scaffold outside the Banqueting House on Whitehall, King Charles I, monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Wales was executed on 30 January 1649. Charles had quarrelled with the Parliament of England over his belief that he could govern his people by the divine right of kings, answerable to no man but only to the will of God. This prompted a series of events that ultimately led to the English Civil War, a conflict that saw Charles in a number of bloody battles with both the English and Scottish parliaments from 1642 until his defeat in 1645. I read the crime novel by Val McDermid several times and like the atmosphere and lonely location of the village where the story takes place.

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Capital punishment has been around in Britain long before the creation of the United Kingdom. At its peak, it is said that there were some 220 crimes which were punishable by death including:

For the eighth consecutive year, fewer than 30 people were executed and fewer than 50 people were sentenced to death,” the Death Penalty Information Center said in its 2022 report. “… The five-year average of executions, 18.6 per year, is the lowest in more than 30 years, a 74% decline over the course of one decade.” Death penalty in decline Hamilton, Andrew Wood, Alexander Leith and Captain James Dawson. Kennington Common is now known as Kennington Park, near Camberwell in London. The execution of 37 year old Francis Townley

Crime Fiction

An intriguing, 200-year-old mystery propels this multilayered stand-alone from British author McDermid set in England's Lake District. Scholar Jane Gresham pursues her theory that HMS Continue reading » and seven at Penrith. A further 22 executions took place at York during November 1746 after trials by a

And sometimes, they seemed to vanish as cleanly as if the earth had opened up and gulped them down. Since Texas became the first state to use lethal injection in 1982, states and the federal government have put about 1572 prisoners to death “by some version of the method,” according to the Death Penalty Information Center. A riveting psychological thriller from the Number One bestselling Queen of crime fiction - Val McDermid.

subjected to the full gruesome rigours of his sentence. Two days later John Carew suffered the same Like any teenager, she’d always found plenty to complain about. But now that she was about to lose it, this life suddenly seemed very desirable. Now at last she began to understand why her elderly relatives clung so tenaciously to every precious moment, even if it was riven with pain. However bad this life was, the alternative was infinitely worse…” George tried to picture Scardale on his mental map of the area. 'Do we have a local man there, Sergeant?' he stalled.