The Walker

Last night I finished The Walker by Jane R Goodall. (It was only when searching for her home page that I realised WHY she needed to follow the American middle initial tradition. If I was her, I'd probably just talk about chimps to make people happy).

A few months ago I read her first book called The Walker and I really really liked it.

This one didn't grip me as much, but then I've been really busy. The friend who lent it to me raved about it and said it was better than the first one. It's set three years on (in 1974) with the same core cast of police. The central character of young female detective, Briony Williams, is still singlehandedely trying to convince the blokes she can do the job. In this book though it comes across that she's pretty well won this battle without quite realising it and there's only one bloke who's a bit of a twit about her abilities but that's because he's a bit of a twit (and I wouldn't be surprised if he confesses his undying love for her in the next book).

The story is spooky and unsettling. Goodall's gone to a lot of effort to establish how people revived the Druidic cults in the 70s. For a while there you feel like you have to believe in spirits. But realy, it's a police investigation dealing with a nasty series of murders.

There is a lot of period detail but it doesn't intrude as much as in the last book. You're conscious of it (not wondering why people just don't use mobiles or something) but there's no disseration on the different clothes women are wearing. This is probably about Goodall's confidence. The local detail of architecture in Oxford and crucial spooky topographical details are really well done. Anyway, hope she keeps going but doesn't do something as spooky next time because that might get a bit old on a third outing.