One Under is now on the longlist of 20 for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel .
Click here to register your vote and have the chance to win a weekend at the festival in July where the winner will be announced.

One Under was also chosen by Waterstones as their September Crime Novel of the Month last year.

Monday, 11th July, 2005, 04.30

Every driver's nightmare.

Assigned to the first train out of Portsmouth, he'd checked in at the Fratton depot before dawn, double-locking his Suzuki 900, stowing his helmet in the crew room, and then making his way upstairs to glance through the emergency speed restrictions and confirm his station stops. This time in the morning, the five-car set would be virtually empty. A handful of staff hitching a ride to stations up the line, maybe a dozen or so City-bound commuters, occasionally a drunk or two, slumped in the corner of the carriage, unconscious after a night in the Southsea clubs.

He was two minutes late off Portsmouth Harbour, waiting for a lone punter off the Isle of Wight Fast Cat, but made up the time before the miles of trackside terraces began to thin and the train clattered over Portsbridge Creek, leaving the city silhouetted against the fierce spill of light to the east.

The station at Havant looked deserted. Coasting to a halt, he waited barely fifteen seconds before the guard closed the doors again. Picking up speed, heading north now, he wondered whether the promised thunder storms would really happen, and whether his partner would remember to close the greenhouse door in case the wind got up.

Beyond the long curve of Rowland's Castle station, the gradient began to steepen. Ahead lay the dark swell of the South Downs. He added more power, watching the speedo needle creep round towards seventy. These new Desiros knocked spots off the old stock. German kit, he thought. Never fails.

Minutes later, deep in a cutting, came the sudden gape of the Buriton Tunnel. He slowed to 40mph and sounded the horn, raising a flurry of wood pigeons from the surrounding trees. Then the world suddenly went black, the clatter of the train pulled tight around him, and he peered into the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Seconds later, still enfolded by the tunnel, he had a sudden glimpse of something ahead on the line. In the dim throw of light from the front of the train, the oncoming shape resolved itself into a body spreadeagled on the nearside rail, then - for a split second - he was looking at a pair of legs, scissored open, and the unmistakeable whiteness of naked flesh.

Instinctively, a single reflex movement, he took the speed off and pushed the brake handle fully forward, feeling his body tensing for the impact, the way he might on the bike, some dickhead stepping out on to the road. Then came a jolt, nothing major, and he knew with a terrible certainty that his eyes hadn't betrayed him, that what he'd seen, what he'd felt, was even now being shredded to pieces in the roaring darkness beneath the train.

The cab began to shudder under the bite of the brakes. The tunnel exit in sight, he pulled the train to a halt and reached for the cab secure radio that would take him to the signalman back at Havant. When the signalman answered, he gave him the train code and location, asked for power isolation, declared an emergency.

"What's up then?" the man wanted to know.
The driver blinked, still staring ahead, aware of the guard trying to contact him on the internal coms.

"One under" he managed, reaching for the door.

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REVIEWS

'DI Joe Faraday is down in the dumps. His lover, Eadie Sykes, has moved to Australia, and Joe's back in Portsmouth. Then there's a new case. A man is found, chopped in half. And that ain't all. Violence is in the air and it spills over on Joe's troops in the worst way.
Hurley is one of the great talents of British police procedurals. Every book he delivers is better than the last and this is no exception. I can't recommend it highly enough.'
Mark Timlin, Independent on Sunday, 28 January 2007

'There is no one writing better police procedurals today than Graham Hurley. His Portsmouth-based series no longer carries 'A Joe Faraday book' tag line; DC Paul Winter, who made an impact right from the first book, now firmly shares centre stage with DI Faraday. One Under further develops their personalities, particularly that of Winter, recently back at work after an operation on his near-fatal brain tumour.The book begins with a horrifying death: a man chained to a railway line is mown down by a train. Identification is at first impossible and by the time the police discover who he was, Winter has found the name of someone else on the missing persons list and started an enthusiastic - and unauthorised - investigation of his own. In other hands the minutiae of a police investigation might make dull reading, but Hurley, an experienced documentary film maker, gives an almost cinematic quality to his narrative, creating a convincing sense of watching a team of real detectives at work.'
Susanna Yager, Daily Telegraph, 24 January 2007

Hurley started the DI Faraday series in 2000, when you might have thought the genre didn't need another police series. But he brings something different to an overworked medium. The procedural part – the collection and collation of large quantities of raw data that make up real police work – is believable and yet never dull. And attention to descriptive detail – of rooms and people – works well in this context. The very nature of such an investigation – requiring a large team of officers – gives Hurley the opportunity to present a big cast of characters that live and develop as the stories progress. He carries off the difficult task of reintroducing his regular characters each time without boring his regular readers. And at the same time still intrigues any new audience. He is bold enough to let Faraday take a back seat in the investigation, as he wrestles with the paperwork and his senior officers whilst Winter takes front of stage in his natural role as instinctive bloodhound. The story begins in the dark of a train tunnel, and finishes in the darkness of men's hearts.
Ian Morson, Tangled Web

‘What makes Hurley’s series unique, and by extension lifts him beyond many of his contempories is the realist way in which detective work is portrayed. If you’re looking for a procedural series led by a maverick cop with no respect for the law itself, then this series may not be the one for you. DI Faraday is a modern detective who, as a matter of course, has to juggle internal political pressure serious criminal investigations. Consistent with the previous titles in the series, One Under doesn’t shy away from addressing difficult questions of contemporary British society, with Portsmouth being evocatively brought to life. Hurley draws on a sense of place to flavour the story, and here we see the lines being blurred between the rich and the poor, the good and the bad, and all neatly brought together in the form of the police’s long-term target, cocaine dealer turned property developer, Barry MacKenzie. Unlike with the majority of crime writing, you’re never sure if those responsible are ultimately going to be held to account, simply because that’s the harsh reality of the world that Faraday and many other detectives inhabit. Rather than being a traditional ‘page turner’, One Under creeps up on you and exerts a more satisfying grip. Slower paced than most modern police procedurals, the small victories for Faraday and his team are that bit harder won and all the more satisfying for it. One Under is no less exciting for this approach, because it’s balanced out by a sense of unrelenting realism that is never less than thoughtfully presented by the author.’
Excerpt from review in SHOTS MAGAZINE by Nick Quantrill January 2007

'Graham Hurley's One Under is definitely not for the faint-hearted, beginning with the grim discovery of a body torn apart under the wheels of a moving train. DI Joe Faraday is assigned to investigate, but with no identity, progress is slow. Colleage DC Winter is also involved, but is side-tracked by what appears to be another mystery involving a missing person. Both gritty and realistic with remarkable attention to detail, this is not a novel to be read late at night.'
Crime Round-Up, Waterstone's Books Quarterly, January 2007

'A first-rate thriller, which is graphic and gritty and will hit you right in the stomach from the very start.' Peterborough Evening Telegraph

'The title of Graham Hurley's latest police procedural refers to the gruesome early scenes when an early-morning train out of Portsmouth runs over a body in a tunnel. One Under appears to have two crimes at its core - the murder of the man who was chained to the railway line, and the disappearance of another, which looks suspiciously like a murder, but with no body to show for it. In the previous book we saw Winter on the verge of a serious operation. He's back almost to fighting fitness, but with a lot of issues to deal with, including his relationship with high-class call girl Maddox. One Under is really his book. He's left at the end with an ethical/unethical call that will leave you pondering long after you've set the book aside. Now Winter is a great creation - the kind of old-fashioned maverick cop who gets results and, despite the reactions he garners from colleagues, you know he's the sort of policeman they'd secretly like to be. Also in the books' favour is the setting. Portsmouth, on the south coast of England, becomes almost like a character in its own right.
One Under is a majestic book. It's immaculately-plotted, has a strong character to anchor it, and shows police work in all its graft and frustrations.
Excerpt from reviewingtheevidence.com by Sharon Wheeler, December 2006

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