A few years ago, I reviewed the first novel in a series about Helen Carter, a police detective in seventies Edinburgh. That was 'The Forgotten' by J. V. Baptie and it was published by Crooked Cat Books. I didn't grab the second book in the series, 'The Departed', when it was available, but am happy to dive into the series now that it's been shifted over to a new publisher with all the details changed. 'The Forgotten' is now 'The Uniform', J. V. Baptie is now Jodie Lawrance and the publisher is now Joffe Books, who made a massive difference to the book's availability.

I read 'The Uniform', or re-read it, given that it's a slightly tweaked version of 'The Forgotten', and felt that it retained all the component parts that I either enjoyed or appreciated in that novel but flowed a little smoother to boot. It was a good book to begin with, but it's a better one now, a solid introduction to the central character in this series and, hey, the cover is much more appropriate too. 'The Evidence' is not 'The Departed', as far as I can tell, but it is the second book in this series and it's a better one again, albeit one that carries fewer surprises.

I would recommend starting with 'The Uniform' but it isn't essential. All you really need to know is that we're in Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland, but in the 1970s, when the highly laddish culture of the police force was opening up to women for the first time. This is fantastic news for Helen Carter, who has studied criminology, including nascent techniques like profiling, and has the appropriate heritage, her father having served as a chief inspector. As you might imagine, the rank and file don't see it as a good move, though, because the fairer sex clearly isn't capable of doing such a tough job.

With a successful murder case behind her, Helen is starting to receive a little respect from her various colleagues, all of whom were introduced in the first book, but it's fair to say that it is just a start, as the culture they've learned over lifetimes does not change overnight. It's just enough that the misogyny on display is a little less overwhelming than what she suffered throughout the first novel. Her partner, DI Jack Craven, was a little more open-minded than the rest of the Fettes police station from the outset, but even he has a long way to go.

In fact, one major reason for the grudging respect on offer isn't due to her mental acuity, her training or her ability to do her job as a detective sergeant, but because she was injured in the line of duty, thus proving that she, and by extension, women, can get as down and dirty as the men and still finish the job that's needed. She's still recovering from those injuries here, when she's called out to a new murder. A barmaid was strangled to death as she walked home from work and there's no obvious evidence to work with, except that Tina French is not the first young lady to be strangled like this in their records.

The other case that takes up much police attention here is even less straightforward. Reggie McKenzie is a thug of a man, but he's not being visited as a suspect, more as a victim, given that he's calling in the polis to investigate the disappearance of his wife, Moira. However, important questions quickly arise, as the more that the police learn about Moira, the more they learn about Reggie. And the more that they learn about Reggie, the more they wonder if Moira is dead rather than just missing. And, if Reggie did murder his wife, could he have murdered Tina French too?

These aren't long books, running somewhere around two hundred and fifty pages, so we can generally expect that each novel will feature a single case with a single criminal and a single solution. One of the successes of this book is that Lawrance isn't content with that simple approach and she weaves multiple cases together, all while deepening her characters admirably. It became clear during the first book that Helen started to suspect that her father may not have been the paragon of virtue she saw him as, and it would be fair to say that she has more questions than ever after what goes down in this one.

Even though I figured some of this out sooner than I tend to, I enjoyed this second Helen Carter novel a little more than I did the first, partly because the things that annoyed me aren't as overt. I should add that the things that annoyed me weren't faults in the writing. It's just that Lawrance is writing about a particular time and place and it simply wasn't all sunshine and daisies for a woman joining the force as a detective. Part of me shouted that I got it, I didn't need to be battered around the head with it, but a bigger part of me acknowledged that that's exactly what it was like.

Similarly, Helen struggled in that first book with her alcoholic boyfriend. It's easy for me to shout that she should just dump him, but it really isn't that simple and Lawrance knows it. That story arc is written how it should have been written and I'm well-aware that I'm not the one having to make that decision. Just because it's an easy one for me, sitting half a century and a continent away, doesn't mean that it's an easy one for her. Because she got there in the end, however, that boyfriend is a milder annoyance in this book and the fact that she's proving herself in the field tones down the misogynism a little. Both those things remain in place as the background noise they should be, but she's a little freer to move on and the series can happily follow suit.

On the flipside, the things I thoroughly enjoyed in that first book are here too and more so. This is the seventies so it's old school detection. Having read a romantic suspense thriller this month that seemed just like a TV show with its shiny IT and happy plot conveniences, I can appreciate books like this one all the more, because they don't have those easy shortcuts. Helen and Jack have to pound the streets for their answers, which don't all conveniently co-exist in the same town. When they look up records, they don't receive the key data at the press of a button. It's hard work at the best of times and brutal work at the worst. The biggest success these books have is their honesty. I read other books and think, "Hey, that's not so bad. I could do that!" I read these books and think, "I'm happy I don't have to do that, but I'm also happy that she can."

Next up: the third book in the series, 'The Suspects', which is already out, with more volumes promised. Now, why hasn't the BBC adapted this yet? These books ought to translate really well into mini-series. I have BritBox. I want to see how well they do. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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