Do you have a taste for vivid, uncompromising crime writing? Do you like your crime fiction meat strong and flavoursome? If so, Simon Becket should be on your reading list. Chemistry of Death and Written in Bone laid out his stall – in no uncertain fashion. In terms of raising the readers’ pulse rate, Becket demonstrated a casual mastery -- and Whispers of the Dead similarly sports all the tightly screwed tension that Becket trades in so successfully.Forensic supremo David Hunter is chafing from the after-effects of the gruesome events of his last assignment and has made an ameliorative journey to the research faculty at which he polished his skills: the institution known as the Body Farm in Tennessee. Hunter receives a request from the man who polished his forensic skills to take a trip to a crime scene – a cabin in the woods, miles from anywhere. The grisly scenario that awaits him there is all too redolent of the horrors he has encountered in the past (the victim’s body is in an advanced state of decomposition, but it has been bound and tortured). Shortly after, a second corpse is discovered, and David Hunter is once again treading familiar territory involving lethal mind games with an ingenious and relentless psychopath.Simon Becket fans will know what to expect from Whispers of the Dead – and if the squeamish are wise enough to steer clear (as they should always do with this writer), the rest of us will have a grimly suspenseful and (it has to be admitted) exhilarating time. --Barry Forshaw
