really enjoyed reading this book, The style of writing is very easy to read and the plot so engrossing and thrilling it keeps you on the edge of your seat until the last page is reached.
Fiona Griffiths is quite a character and after signing up for an undercover police course and passing, she is given an assignment which involves payroll fraud, but this turns out to be a major crime, which puts her in some very dangerous situations.
Along with the brilliant storyline, it is also an interesting look into how someone can completely take on the character of another, which I found fascinating.
If you like crime books you have really got to read this! It started out as nothing much.
A minor payroll fraud at a furniture store in South Wales, No homicide involved, no corpses, Detective Constable Fiona Griffiths fights to get free of the case, but loses, She's tasked with the investigation,
She begins her enquiries, only to discover the corpse of a woman who's starved to death, Looks further, and soon realizes that within the first, smaller crime, a vaster one looms: the most audacious theft in history.
Fionas bosses need a copper willing to go undercover, and they ask Fiona to play the role of a timid payroll clerk so that she can penetrate the criminal gang from within.
Fiona will be alone, shell be lethally vulnerable and her fragile grip on Planet Normal will be tested as never before.
. . In Talking to the Dead, Harry Bingham introduced DC Fiona Griffiths, who might one day rank with Tana French's Cassie Maddox amp Sharon Bolton's Lacey Flint as an attractive amp intriguing protagonist, but who still needed further development as a character amp an officer.
The sequel, Love Story with Murders, let me down badly, But I'm pleased to find that in The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths she fulfills her earlier promise amp earns promotion to join the team.
Well done, Harry.
The aspects of Love Story with Murders that most annoyed me are mostly gone the stereotypical Russian bore Lev doesn't appear, Fiona's exgangster with a heart of gold father plays but a minor role, we hear Fiona throwing Fbombs about mostly only under stress, and her relationship with Buzz achieves what I at least found a very satisfactory resolution.
We also get a very smooth amp very evil villain amp a resourceful amp very able heroine facing deadly perils.
A really good book is not just a pleasure in itself, but illuminates its entire genre, This is not only a great story about an undercover detective, but helped me better understand Tana French's The Likeness amp other stories with characters with multiple identities, a theme that fascinates me.
Fiona not only assumes a new identity, she lives it so completely that it becomes her real self, something that also seemed to happen with Cassie/Lexie in The Likeness.
Bingham is not as subtle amp perceptive as French or Bolton, but no fan of British detective fiction should miss this one.
Slightly less exciting and humorous than the previous books but it gives a good impression of a lengthy undercover operation.
I looking forward to the next, Perfect trillerif it was possible Another wonderful book about the life of Fiona Griffiths and her alter ego s.
I was struggling to finish this one,
The story is intriguing and exciting but temporarily dull I love the character of Fiona Griffiths and enjoyed the last two books of this series.
In this book, it was too evident that the female character was written by a man a lot of internalised misogyny, which was just annoying.
In addition, some parts felt racially insensitive,
Overall I was very disappointed and will most likely not continue to read the series,
Maybe I am just over men writing female characters,.stars, Fiona Griffiths is one of the genre's more interesting characters
Dear oh dear, Fiona Griffiths gets herself into some situations! She has passed her undercover course with flying colours and is investigating a spot of payroll fraud.
She can't get into too much trouble with this right Wrong, When an elderly woman is found dead of starvation in her home Fiona realises there are unintended victims from this fraud and vows to see justice done.
Her undercover skills are put to the test to infiltrate the payroll fraudsters, Fiona soon realises that the scale of the operation is far bigger than anyone thought, As she excels at infiltrating targeted computers, the fraud gang trust her with more and more, After attending a 'retreat' at a remote location, it dawns on her how vast this fraud actually is, and that anyone who threatens the business is expendable.
Including possibly herself.
The 'strange death' in the title is about Fiona totally living the role she is playing, In fact she seems to enjoy being Fiona Grey the cleaner more than her real life, This is all to do with her strange affliction Cotards which sometimes has her feeling pretty unreal, Fiona has also learnt that her parents are not her real parents, that she was found at the age of two and a bit in the back seat of her father's Jaguar.
She thinks some trauma before then may be what has caused her mental condition, In this book she takes further steps to find out where she really came from, who her real parents are, in the hope of becoming a permanent member of 'planet normal' as she refers to it.
Fiona is quite an engaging character and really puts herself on the line in this story, A fantastic series. This is therd book in the Fiona Griffiths series by author Harry Bingham, The thing I particularly like about this series is that they are quirky and not quite like other book series.
Leadcharacter Fiona Griffiths is a fierce detective constable from Cardiff who is certainly different, Fiona suffers from a rare psychosis called Cotards Syndrome and spent time in her youth in mental institutions, She overcame the illness to attend university and succeed in joining the police force, On top of all these anomalies her adoptive father is also a criminal in the area, Like I say this series is a little different and quirky,
In this book Fiona works under cover posing as a payroll clerk while investigating a minor payroll fraud at a furniture store but things are never straight forward in Fiona's world.
She soon discovers the corpse of a woman who's starved to death and realises that this supposedly minor crime is much bigger and is actually a very bold theft.
It took me a while to get back into the feel of the character and probably accounts for thestar rating.
In truth the more I read the more I enjoyed it and possibly would have marked higher if had of read the previous books more recently.
I have the next book in the series already to read, OMG, OMG, OMG, this book is so good and Fiona is so amazing, Der erste rundum erfreuliche und überhaupt nicht ärgerliche Krimi seit wahrscheinlich Jahren, Auf Empfehlung von Marcus Gärtner gelesen und auf Empfehlung von Marcus Gärtner auch direkt mit diesem dritten Band der Serie eingestiegen.
Kompetente, interessante Protagonistin, für mich solide aussehende britische Polizeiarbeit, kein Quatsch mit individuellen Morden, es geht nicht um Psychologie und Motivation, sondern einfach um Geld und am Ende bleiben Dinge unaufgeklärt.
Muss weg, die anderen Bände auch noch lesen, The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths is the third book in the series about a young police officer who suffers from Cotards Syndrome.
While highly competent and driven, Fiona lives almost outside herself and has trouble identifying emotions or how people expect her to behaviour, constantly secondguessing what she should do or say in any situation.
This gives her a vulnerability, yet at the same time she pushes boundaries and is not easily managed, Shes a wonderful literary creation, an engaging, complex, multidimensional, and often surprising character, In this outing, she trains to go undercover and then penetrates a sophisticated, careful and ruthless criminal gang who are perpetrating an enormous accounting fraud against several companies.
The undercover work is challenging and places her fragile identity under pressure, The plotting is excellent, with Bingham spinning a multilayered tale that also twists and turns and creates plenty of tension.
The hook is a crime that is relatively unusual in crime fiction and is ingenious in its conception and implementation.
The police procedural elements are very nicely done rather than the formulaic boss and sidekick, Bingham provides the full panoply of units, forces, personalities, roles, procedures, and politics that operate during a major investigation.
The undercover training and deployment instinctively feels realistic, Indeed, just about the whole book feels steeped in realism, though Fionas family life, with her father formerly being a major crime lord, has the feel of a plot device, and the denouement is also somewhat soupedup to be a dramatic finale.
Nonetheless, this is a superb read and Ive a keen sense of anticipation for reading the next instalment, Thrilling and twisted Absolutely fantastic, I loved the firstFiona Griffiths mysteries and therd is as good, if not even better, What a wonderfully original character Harry Bingham has created, Hopefully he's writing no.in the series or has finished it!, I for one can't wait for the next one, Please keep writing them, Mr, Bingham
This was another fast moving crime story, I enjoyed the undercover aspect and found that it felt realistic, Great read. Very intense/rounded up
This originally appeared at sitelinkThe Irresponsible Reader,
From the instant that it was mentioned in Love Story, With Murders that Fi Griffiths had signed up for a course in Undercover work, every reader knew that she'd end up doing some deep undercover work soon.
Thankfully, Bingham didn't make us wait too long because here comes both the course and the assignment, But before we get to the assignment, Fi gets this wonderful reality check after her course:
Im tasked to process paperwork on a couple of cases that are coming to court.
Someone assigns me to help on a team that is developing advice on how to avoid thefts from vehicles.
The first of our meetings takes an hour and forty minutes and the gist of our advice will be, Lock your car and hide your valuables.
Or, to simplify further, Dont be a bloody idiot,
I suggest that as a slogan and everyone looks at me,
I just loved that, Anyway, this seems like a perfect idea there's a real sense in which everyday life is an undercover assignment for Fi, letting her do it as part of her
job seems like a nobrainer.
Not that her superiors really understand that, but her readers do,
The case started off as a simple payroll fraud investigation a clever and ambitious fraud, make no mistake, but not the kind of things that excites any police detective especially one like Fi.
But then, she ties one suspicious death into this crime and then a particularly gruesome murder as well, These discoveries are enough to get The Powers That Be to take this seriously enough to put Fi and another officer undercover as payroll clerks to infiltrate this scheme.
Eventually, Fi is recruited by the people they'd hoped recruit her and the game is afoot, Fi does things that will surprise the reader as much as they do to her targets in her efforts to bring some justice to the situation.
At some point, Fi is going over the results of her work thus far with our friend, DCI Jackson, and her handler from Organized Crime
Brattenbury says, Fiona, this is remarkable work.Which is essentially the outline for every Fiona Griffiths novel, really,
You
Jackson interrupts him, Dont flatter her. Shell cock everything up. Or start shooting people.
Watching Fi go deeper into her cover and into the fraud activity is gripping and also very different from the earlier books.
Fiona doesn't get to spend as much time with the dead as she likes, she can't have their pictures on display without ruining her cover.
It doesn't stop her from doing what she can along those lines, but it gives Strange Death a different feel from its predecessors.
Fi's investigation of the deaths isn't the focus of this novel, it's her undercover work how she does it, how she embodies her cover, how as her cover she contributes to the community, how she learns things that can help her both the fictional her and the real.
Like too many who go undercover, Fi arguably gets too close to her targets it's not much of an argument, really, and lines between the detective and the felonious payroll clerk blurred more than they should've.
The same kind of focus, the same kind of attachment she makes to the victims in the other books and cases we don't have record of is brought to the people and work she encounters here.
At the same time, Fi's desire need for the emotional, familial and romantic connections she's made has never been stronger.
Those things that she wanted, so she can be more like a citizen of "Planet Normal," act as an anchor to reality in a way that has to surprise her.
Not only that, she forges new relationships as DC Griffiths through these events, Minor spoiler: the Fiona Griffiths that emerges from this assignment is a noticeably different, more wellrounded, and changed in other less pleasant ways.
It was good to see DCI Jackson at work again, The other police officers particularly Brattenbury and his team were more interesting than we've gotten before, The same could and should be said for the other supporting characters we encounter in these pages criminal and civilian alike.
I hope that Bingham is able to find ways to bring many of these characters back in future novels or he can just give us new characters that are as well constructed, but I like so many of these I'd prefer to see them.
I'm a sucker for undercover cop stories since the first time I saw Ken Wahl's Vinnie Terranova when I was too young to be seeing such things and what his work did to him.
This was no exception and a strong sample of the type, This story of Fiona Griffiths' UC work is just as gripping, just as surprising as you could want and a sure sign that this character is more than a onetrick pony if anyone was still wondering and that Bingham is a writer to watch.
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