Well-known TV documentary producer Graham Hurley enters the world of crime fiction with mixed results.

Graham Hurley always wanted to be a novelist. Straight from Cambridge University, he produced “five mercifully unpublished manuscripts” before a stint in the military.

Hurley moved into documentary television as a director and producer. His preference for action shows in his choice of subjects. These include the seabed wrecks of the Titanic and Bismarck, profiles of the Brighton Bomber, and an account of Richard Branson's near-fatal attempt at a balloon crossing of the Atlantic.

Changes in the television industry opened the door for Hurley to realize his dream of returning to the print medium. Hurley produced a number of thrillers dramatizing events with international significance, such as Northern Ireland, Desert Storm and the struggle with terrorism.

In Turnstone, Hurley moves into the police procedural and displays well-informed influences of the hard-boiled detective genre.

This is the first in series featuring the detectives of his home town of Portsmouth in England. Hurley brings a strong sense of place to Turnstone and this helps make the book an intriguing read for readers of detective fiction.

Plotting

Turnstone features inventive plot twists that are often disguised as mundane repetitions of overworked clichés. Because of this, the plot threatens to become just another melodrama.

There are traces of the complex plots twists of English drawing room murder mysteries, where a intricate series of clues leads to the all-important revealing of the murderer.

However, the sometimes-plodding narrative serves to highlight the occasions when Hurley drops in jewels of clever plot twists and meaningful insights into human nature.

Hurley expects his readers to pay attention , but even when a plot twist is expected Hurley's inventiveness can still surprise.

Genre Buster

This departure into detective fiction shows traces of Hurley’s dalliance in the best seller/thriller genre. There are celebrity villains and plenty of the high life with wealthy yachtsmen and the hazards of offshore ocean racing as part of the scene.

The bestseller influence carries over into the reliance on brand names of objects. This technique is reminiscent of novels from the sex and shopping genre. Hurley relies on the reader’s perception of brand name to help create a mood or define a character.

Characterization

Hurley follows their tradition of using the detective novel to examine the personality of the characters and their relationship with their environment. The plot partly serves to provide new situations, allowing Hurley to explore different facets of the human condition.

Hurley presents detectives, Joe Faraday and Paul Winter, to illustrate two aspects of how detectives operate in a management driven environment. Providing a contrast to the plights of the male detectives, Hurley introduces a female protagonist, Cathy Lamb, albeit in supporting role.

The personal issues of the detectives mix in with their pursuit of justice. Naturally, an essential trait of the hard-boiled genre surfaces, with heroes battling not only the bad guys, but overcoming opposition from the establishment and their superiors.

Setting

Mixed in with the superficial fluff is a tale of the more traditional detective style of John Harvey and Ian Rankin. Hurley creates a believable Portsmouth, peeling back the layers of the local society with all the contrasts of the two extremes of a city that only a local can impart.

One of the themes running through Turnstone is the conflict between the new, represented by the property developers and the old, embodied by the inhabitants of the council estates of ‘Pompey’.

The title, Turnstone, indicates another part of the contrast, as it refers to Faraday’s passion for birds, particularly those on the coastal mudflats and the one sharing its name with Hurley’s tale.

www.grahamhurley.co.uk/

Hurley, Graham. Turnstone. London: Orion, 2000.