H.R.F Keating One Man and His Bomb

One Man and His Bomb

H.R.F Keating

St. Martin's, August 2006, $24.95, 256 pp.

ISBN 0312349882

At home while talking to her husband, Detective Superintendent Harriet Martens feels a tinge of foreboding when thunder sounds unexpectedly. The phone rings a moment later and Superintendent Charles Robertson tells her that a bomb exploded killing her son, Police Constable Graham Piddock and seriously injuring his twin brother Police Constable Malcolm. Indian terrorists claim responsibility, saying they are at war with western imperialism.

Harriet's superior knows she needs something to concentrate on other than her grief and puts her on a case where another form of terrorism is involved. The Heronsgate, a government agricultural lab was ordered to destroy CA 534, but the director held on to a sample that could be used to destroy crops. Harriet interviews a variety of people from a retired German professor on the National Watch List, to the assistant the director fired to the WAGI (Women against Interference) but finds no one who stands out of the crowd as the thief.

H.R.F Keating shows how the British police cope with the war on terror and how the protagonist copes with her grief that a terrorist bomb killed one son and maimed another. Readers see much more of the heroine's personal life and her interactions with her husband and surviving offspring. Those reflections soften her image and make her seem more like a real person instead of a stereotypical police officer who is hard on crime. The who-done-it is cleverly crafted and complex, leaving the reader clueless about the identity of the thief.

Harriet Klausner