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Jenny Cooper Series by M. R. Hall


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The Coroner by M.R. Hall



 

Brief Summary from Amazon:

 

 

Many are the debuts in the crime fiction field that create a brief flurry of interest then sink without trace. It’s a fairly safe bet, however, that MR Hall’s The Coroner won’t suffer that fate – this is a fresh and original piece of work that is already gleaning a fair measure of praise. Hall has worked extensively in television on such successful series as Judge John Deed, Kavanagh QC and Dalziel and Pascoe, and the expertise gained there is parleyed into very impressive results here.

 

 

 

The beleaguered heroine, Jenny Cooper, is not in the best of shape. She has been recently divorced, and has suffered a nervous breakdown. But Jenny is hoping that her new job – Coroner for the Severn Vale -- will get her life back on an even keel. Living on a desperate diet of anti-depressants and downers, she finds herself involved in looking into something worrying: the deaths of several teenagers at local detention centres. Has her predecessor neglected some crucial information in this area? As Jenny digs deeper, she encounters a solid wall of bureaucratic resistance. But however screwed up her own life is, Jenny is not going to give up on the uphill task she’s set herself.

 

 

 

We have, of course, encountered the troubled, damaged protagonist before, many times – both in male and female form. But such is M R Hall’s skill that even in this over-familiar territory, clich

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The Disappeared by M.R. Hall

 

 

 

Brief Summary from Amazon:

 

 

 

In the bestselling tradition of Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta, M. R. Hall's heroine Jenny Cooper makes her debut as a coroner with a detective's eye and a woman with a home life as complicated as her cases.

 

 

 

In this brilliant debut, Jenny investigates the disappearance of two young Muslim students, who vanished without a trace seven years ago. The police had concluded that the boys, under surveillance for some time for suspicion of terrorism, had fled to Pakistan to traffic in the atrocities of Islamic fanaticism. Now, sufficient time has passed for the law to declare the boys legally dead. A final declaration is left up to a coroner, Jenny Cooper.

 

 

 

As Jenny's official inquest progresses, the stench of corruption is unmistakable. Not only does it appear that British Security Services played a role, but the involvement of an American intelligence agent soon makes it clear that a vast conspiracy is in play. As Jenny builds an ever-strengthening case implicating a shocking collection of power and influence, she meets with a determined and increasingly menacing resistance. When she links the students' "vanishing" to the unidentified corpse of a beautiful young woman and the fate of a missing nuclear scientist, Jenny is forced into an arena in which she is pushed to the breaking point and beyond. She must struggle with her own inner demons while fighting a lone and desperate battle to bring an unspeakable crime to justice.

 

 

 

This second book in the series was very good and kept you wanting to arrive at the resolution. Hall further develops the character of Jenny, showing her fragility and fury a little more and manages to enlarge the supporting cast a little more. I loved the character of Alec McAvoy: down, dirty and brilliant.

 

 

 

Again, being a series, The Disappeared leaves you with a HUGE OMG at the end. Hurry, Mr. Hall, I want more

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