A back full of daggers

Having recently been awarded the Cartier Diamond dagger prize for "sustained excellence in writing crime", John Harvey is the author of the moment for those hooked on the Crime Scene Investigation series who have been snooping around another medium for a good read.

Set in Cambridge and Nottingham, Mr Harvey's latest novel, Gone to Ground, is peopled by professionals from all walks of life: inspectors, property businessmen, actresses, journalists, academic professors as well as vandals, all entangled in the crime world after the ruthlessly mutilated dead body of gay film professor Stephen Bryan is discovered in the shower in his Cambridge apartment.

Three lines of enquiry are pursued as who the assassin could be: a jilted lover, a casual pick-up or a gay basher. Mark McKusick, Stephen's ex-boyfriend, is the first to be interrogated but he is soon released when no sufficient evidence is found to pile the guilt on him.

Meanwhile, Lesley Scarman, the victim's sister, a BBC Nottingham Radio journalist, decides to conduct her own inquiry after she discovers that her brother's laptop has gone missing. Including his research on a 1950s film star, Stella Leonard, whose own death was shrouded in a lot of hush-hush. Her filmography includes the 1950s film Shattered Glass, about two sisters who despite being polar opposites fall in love with the same man. Here, Mr Harvey might have overlooked the fact that a film with this same title was actually released in 2003, although admittedly with a totally different plot.

Gone to Ground is full of flukes as Lesley soon finds out that a remake of the film is in the works, starring the beautiful and troubled actress, Natalie Prince, whose great-aunt happens to be none other than Stella Leonard. Lesley then contacts her sleazy former husband, who in another twist of fate acts as Miss Prince's public relations officer, helping set up an appointment between the reporter and the popular actress.

Quite conveniently for Mr Harvey, Lesley and Natalie become fast friends, and Lesley learns that Natalie's mother is locked inside the Princes' home in the fens. Natalie's father, Howard Prince, Nottingham's primary estate mogul, has done the impossible to keep the media at bay and has even threatened Stephen Bryan to abandon his Stella Leonard biography with a letter from his lawyer. Howard Prince's business dealings as well as his arrogant and aggressive approach do him no favours in trailing him away from the inquiry.

Mr Harvey's extensively intricate storyline also takes the reader inside Detective Grayson's household where his strained relationship with his wife Lorraine suffers one blow after another due to his long working hours and her desire to go back to the workforce instead of staying at home greasing the oven pans and changing diapers. Lorraine's character is a crafty component inserted by Harvey to throw light on the relationship between Grayson and Walker.

After becoming involved in an attack on two male university students by a group of hoodlums, Sergeant Walker is clipped in the wings as she is left severely wounded and is consequently hospitalised. This is another clever thread Mr Harvey weaves to display the issues of street violence in England. The police's trail is further delayed when aeons seem to pass until the analysis of the fingerprints found on a slab of wood ditched in the river nearby the Cambridge apartment produce the much anticipated results. The Leonard family's dark mystery is unravelled sooner than expected. Here Mr Harvey might have been easily inspired by Roman Polanski's 1974 film noir Chinatown as Stella Leonard's shady character faces the same predicament as Faye Dunaway's Evelyn.

The author's ubiquitous narrative leads to a clever yet simple conclusion, which compensates for the multifarious threads in the novel. It is quite remarkable how Mr Harvey also manages to insert excerpts from the script of Shattered Glass at the beginning, halfway through and at the end of the novel. His well-written dialogues are intensely absorbing and Mr Harvey's elaborate and detailed account leave the reader completely hung up for more. One particular vivid and gripping description to which Harvey dedicates almost a whole page is that of Beth Orton's voice and mannerisms, observed at a concert Lesley attends.

If accidental encounters and inflated storylines are not your cup of tea, then you might want to leave this book on the shelf. However, if you're into the riveting wild-goose chase style of investigative tales, you need to look no further.

• Ms Gatt has a Masters (taught) in modern and contemporary English literature and has recently become rapt with espionage literature.

• A review copy of this title was supplied by www.ilovebooks.com.mt