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29th January 2018

Talking To The Dead By Harry Bingham – Book Review #4

I’ve bought lots of books from the charity shop after reading the blurb on the back. I get annoyed when it doesn’t mention anywhere that the book is part of a series.
Luckily, Talking To The Dead turned out to be the first book in this series.

I’ve got about 4 books (that I know of so far) that are books from the middle of a series. I now have to collect the series if I want to read those books!

I’ve learnt my lesson now. I’ll Google each book before I buy it to make sure it isn’t part of a series.

Talking To The Dead

Here’s the blurb from Goodreads:

SHE KNOWS WHAT IT’S LIKE. . . .

At first, the murder scene appears sad, but not unusual: a young woman undone by drugs and prostitution, her six-year-old daughter dead alongside her. But then detectives find a strange piece of evidence in the squalid house: the platinum credit card of a very wealthy–and long dead–steel tycoon. What is a heroin-addicted hooker doing with the credit card of a well-known and powerful man who died months ago? This is the question that the most junior member of the investigative team, Detective Constable Fiona Griffiths, is assigned to answer.

But D.C. Griffiths is no ordinary cop. She’s earned a reputation at police headquarters in Cardiff, Wales, for being odd, for not picking up on social cues, for being a little overintense. And there’s that gap in her past, the two-year hiatus that everyone assumes was a breakdown. But Fiona is a crack investigator, quick and intuitive. She is immediately drawn to the crime scene, and to the tragic face of the six-year-old girl, who she is certain has something to tell her . . . something that will break the case wide open.

Ignoring orders and protocol, Fiona begins to explore far beyond the rich man’s credit card and into the secrets of her seaside city. And when she uncovers another dead prostitute, Fiona knows that she’s only begun to scratch the surface of a dark world of crime and murder. But the deeper she digs, the more danger she risks–not just from criminals and killers but from her own past . . . and the abyss that threatens to pull her back at any time.

My Thoughts

I was really looking forward to reading this book but I have to say I was very disappointed.
The blurb on the back says:

A detective with a disconcerting familiarity with corpses.

Listening to what the dead woman and her daughter are trying to tell her, and tracing the twisted path that led them to their deaths, quickly becomes an obsession for DC Fiona Griffiths. But searching for the truth wherever it leads will mean taking a journey to the last place she wants to go.

Her past.

I took from this that she had a way of ‘talking with the dead’. This was further backed up, or so I thought when I read the end of chapter 1 where it says:

Matthews is talking about formalities and I’m blathering answers back at him, but my attention isn’t with any of that stuff. I’m going to be a policewoman. And just five years ago, I was dead.

I couldn’t wait to find out what she meant by this. It turned out I had to wait right until the end of the book and by that time, I wasn’t really bothered any more.
The book seemed to go on forever but I never really got sucked into the story. I was often confused about what was actually going on and it took so long to get answers to everything that I stopped caring.

At the end of the book, Fiona found out something about her past that I think was meant to make me want to go and buy the next book. I won’t be bothering.

talking to the dead by Harry Bingham

Goodreads challenge 4 books read


MamaMummyMum
 

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Shower Room Upgrade – Rainfall Shower

If you’re a long-time reader, you’ll know that our downstairs shower room is in serious need of an upgrade. I think it’s been in since the 80s and it’s very pink!
I’ve probably written about it every year since moving here and I’m afraid to say it’s still got the pink bathroom suite.

The problem is, the bathroom always seems to be the one home improvement project that can get put back when something else crops up.
It’s all in working order, it’s just the look of it that needs changing so it’s never the number one priority.

It’s also lots to think about and decisions to be made that can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming. Just trying to decide and agree on which type of shower enclosure to choose can be a bit frustrating! We found an article on Glass Crafters Inc that helped us consider the pros and cons for each type of shower enclosure – http://blog.glasscraftersinc.com/frameless-vs-semi-frameless-vs-framed-shower-enclosures/. We’re leaning towards a frameless enclosure but plans can still change!

I really want to make it a priority this year but with so many other projects in the pipeline, I fear it’s going to stay pink for yet another year!

shower

Upgrade

We did decorate the shower room last year and it looks much better than it did but that’s just another reason to put it off in favour of everything else.
Ant really hates the shower in there because it’s tiny. You have to be very careful not to touch the shower curtain when you’re having a shower because the floor gets soaking wet if every bit of it isn’t inside the shower tray.
Just this morning I stepped onto a soggy, squelchy bathmat because one of the children hadn’t kept the curtain inside the tray.

Wet Room

Ant would really love a wet room but I reckon it’ll be out of our price range. He’ll be happy with a better shower, a glass shower surround and a wedi shower base. He’s going to start planning the layout soon.
The easiest thing to do would be to replace everything but keep it all in the same place.

However, that’s not what we want. We want the sink moving next to the toilet and a tall cupboard installing so I can store all the towels and toilet roll out of sight.
I’ve said before that Ant can turn his hand to most things and he finds plumbing fairly easy. It means I’ve no worries about getting a big bill if all the plumbing needs changing when we move everything around.

bathroom upgrade

Rainfall Shower

Ant would really love a rainfall shower but he said he’ll need to fit a new shower pump to power it. The system we have now is too old to be of any use if we had a rainfall shower.
I’ve been checking out the cost of changing to a new rainfall shower and I’m pleased to say it’s not as expensive as I thought, even when we include the cost of a new pump.
You can buy shower pumps from Pump Sales Direct. They stock an impressive range of shower pumps – all of which are designed to improve water pressure and efficiency.

It’s going to be lovely having a shower with proper pressure but it will mean I’ll have to invest in a shower cap to keep my hair dry. At the moment it’s easy enough to keep my hair away from the water because it’s not a very good shower!

This is a collaborative post.

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