PRELUDE

Monday 16th February, 2004

Flat on her belly on the freezing turf, she sucked in a tiny lungful of air and then steadied the binoculars and tried again. 300 ft below, a flooding tide washed over the tumble of chalky boulders at the foot of the cliff, wave after wave that curtained the shape she thought she'd glimpsed. The shape worried at her. It couldn't be, just couldn't be. Not the way she'd seen it. Not in that kind of state.
Shifting her weight in the bulky anorak, she tracked slowly left, waiting for the next wave to fold, collapse and die. Sluicing back, it revealed nothing, just the pale whites of the broken chalk, latticed with the rich greens and browns of half a winter's growth of seaweed. She swallowed hard, wondering whether she might have imagined it, this split second image that refused to go away. Maybe it was a mirage, a trick of the light. Maybe getting up at six in the morning and shipping across to the island on the rumour of a pair of falcons did funny things to the inside of your head.
On the point of giving up and finding a new location, she eased the binoculars a little further to the left, trying to go with the grain of the tide. For an instant came the blur of a black-headed gull riding the column of wind blasting up the cliff face then - all too distinct - she found herself looking at the shape again, unmistakable this time, momentarily trapped against a sizeable boulder. She watched, fascinated, appalled, then fumbled for her mobile, one hand still locked on the binoculars. For a second, presented with a brisk list of options, she didn't quite know what to say.
"Police", she managed at last.
But it was the Coastguard who arrived first, bumping over the frosty turf in a new-looking Land Rover. Pausing for a brief account of what had happened, he accompanied the woman to the edge of the cliff, using his own binoculars to confirm the presence of the body beneath. Back at the Land Rover, he leaned into the cab and reached for the radio. The woman caught mention of "Bembridge" and "lifeboat" before the clatter of a big helicopter drowned out the rest of the conversation. The helicopter seemed to appear from nowhere, tracking low over the Down, then banking steeply as it left the cliff face behind it. The Coastguard motioned the woman away from the edge of the cliff as the rotor wash swirled around them.
"Cliff rescue team should be here any minute" he said. "Police, too."
The policeman was young. He took the woman through what happened and asked him if she was prepared to make a statement later. Beyond them, on the cliff top, the rescue team were lowering four men and a stretcher on a skein of ropes, while the helicopter hovered offshore, the face of the watching pilot clearly visible. Abruptly, he waved to someone down below, gave him the thumbs up. Then, as if this was something they did everyday of their working lives, the team on the clifftop were hauling their cargo back in.
The woman edged back to the clifftop, absorbed by this small drama, by the way that the shape in his binoculars had surrendered to this smooth exercise in retrieval. Peering over, she had time to register two of the men steadying a stretcher, half way up the cliff. Strapped to the stretcher was a plastic body bag, grey, bulky. From this distance it looked like a parcel they'd found on the beach.
The woman shifted on the clifftop, unable to tear herself away. The blast of the wind. The steady whump-whump of the helicopter The angry squawk of disturbed gulls. And the deadweight of that strange grey package bumping against the cliff face. Then came a hand on her shoulder and she turned to find herself eye to eye with the Coastguard. He was tall, blue jump-suit, tightly cropped grey hair. "Best not to look, madam, this wind. Don't want two of you down there, do we?"
Chastened, the woman stepped away from the cliff face. But try as she might, she couldn't rid himself of that first glimpse of the body on the stretcher, the image that had registered for a split second in her binoculars and triggered this extraordinary operation. The mottled naked greyness of the flesh. The huge distended belly. The floppy limbs flailing in the tide. And how strange a body looked without a head.

REVIEWS

Not being police officers, most readers have to take on trust the accuracy of Graham Hurley's account of their work, but there is no doubt that his series of police procedural novels is one of the best since the genre was invented more than half a century ago. Hurley makes plodding routine convincing but not serious, and his setting in rough, seedy, insular Portsmouth is as characterful as the cops. Many of them come and go but Detective Inspector Faraday and Detective Constable Winter are the resident heroes, both men lonely widowers, convincing, compassionate and like all the best series heroes, have troublesome personal problems which never quite stop them detecting. In this book, we see Winter falling apart as he refuses to give in to increasingly crippling headaches and gets involved with a posh prostitute. Faraday becomes obsessed beyond the call of duty with a wide-ranging investigation sparked off by the discovery of a headless corpse washed up on an Isle of Wight beach. As always, Hurley has pulled off the trick of filling his pages with downbeat, depressing details and making them into an upbeat, enjoyable read.
The Literary Review: March 2006

DI Joe Faraday is the name, Portsmouth is the patch. Hurley's decent, persistent cop is cementing his reputation as one of Britain's most credible official sleuths, crisscrossing the mean streets of a city that is a brilliantly depicted microcosm of contemporary Britain. His investigations are realistic and authoritative, perhaps as a result of Hurley's background in documentary films. The discovery of a headless corpse below the cliffs of the Isle of Wight leads Faraday to the grim trade in human cargo, from cheap labour to prostitution, with which Portsmouth - as one of the country's biggest ports - is rife. The unfolding panorama of Blair's England is both edifying and shameful, and a sterling demonstration of the way crime writing can target society's woes.
Maxim Jakubowski, The Guardian 11/2/06

No police procedural conveys a more authentic-seeming picture of what modern British policing's really like than Graham Hurley's excellent series set in Portsmouth. His two central characters, DI Joe Faraday and DC Paul Winter are both widowers and essentially loners. In "Blood and Honey" Winter, suffering debilitating headaches and awaiting the result of medical tests which he is convinced will be a death sentence, is determined to bring down a corrupt businessman. The policeman's relationship with a high-class prostitute who volunteers to help him makes for an interesting sidelight on this complex man. Meanwhile, Faraday is obsessed with trying to find evidence against a man he believes is behind a headless body washed up after months in the sea. Their separate inquiries come together to make another first-rate thriller from a writer who is firmly up there with the best.
Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph, 22/1/2006.

Delivery Report from Orion Series Editor, Simon Spanton

Graham Hurley has been refining and improving the basic shape of his Joe Faraday and Paul Winter novels ever since the delivery of Turnstone. Each new book has been met with ever more enthusiastic praise from reviewers and readers alike and Graham's reputation has grown to the point where he's become generally acknowledged as the master of the truly realised yet passionately delivered police procedural crime novel. Book Six, Blood and Honey, takes Graham's template of rigorous adherence to the facts, a heartfelt social conscience, and a concern with the fine detail of his characters' lives and loves, and wraps it around a new and extremely commercial hook.

The discovery of a headless body in the sea beneath cliffs on the Isle of Wight kicks off the latest investigation for D/I Joe Faraday. ID of the body proves impossible but the disappearance of a young delivery driver who has fallen foul of the owner of a local nursing home - an ex-soldier with a violent temper - gives the investigating team an important lead.

Meanwhile, D/C Winter's life lurches from crisis to crisis as he becomes involved with a beautiful young prostitute at the centre of an investigation of a prominent and powerful local businessman. Winter's problems are further compounded by a series of vicious and debilitating migraines, the implications of which begin to alarm him.

Graham has given us a murder investigation with a gruesomely fascinating core: a body that volunteers its forensic evidence with extreme reluctance, somehow tied to a murder with a perpetrator but no known victim. He plays both our own expectations and those of the police with a masterly touch and the plot leads both parties up a cunningly-designed cul-de-sac. Along the way we are given fresh and surprising insights into the immigration problem - plus a powerful reminder of the Balkan conflict.

These are exactly the kind of incidental trademark pleasures embedded in previous Faraday books but Blood and Honey also offers both a compelling investigation with a superbly commercial hook, and a deeply-affecting exploration of the series' most powerful character as he begins to fall apart. Never shy of backing himself against life's many challenges, D/C Paul Winter faces his biggest gamble yet.