Books by John Harvey

Flesh & Blood (Frank Elder Mysteries)

by John Harvey

Betrayed by his wife and recently retired from the police, Detective Inspector Elder is drawn out of his reclusive life to solve an old murder case that will not let him rest. By the author of In a True Light.

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Darkness & Light: A Frank Elder Mystery (Frank Elder Mysteries)

by John Harvey

Former cop Frank Elder is drawn out of retirement when his ex-wife asks him to look into the disappearance of her friend Jennie’s sister Claire in Nottingham. Elder reluctantly returns to the city where his family disintegrated.

Elder uncovers sexual secrets of Claire’s that take Jennie by surprise. But when Claire is found dead at home―unmarked and carefully dressed―it is Elder who is surprised by the similarities to an old case. To solve this riddle, Elder will have to repartner with Detective Inspector Maureen Prior and delve into several suspects’ traumatic histories.

In a case in which neither memories, confessions, nor instincts can be trusted, Elder struggles with the weight of the past and Harvey delivers another psychologically trenchant page-turner.

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Ash & Bone: A Frank Elder Mystery (Frank Elder Mysteries)

by John Harvey

In the depths of his Cornish hideaway, retired Detective Inspector Frank Elder’s solitary life is disturbed by a call from his ex-wife, telling him his seventeen-year-old daughter, Katherine, is running wild, unbalanced by the abduction and rape he feels he should have prevented. Meanwhile, in the heart of London, the takedown of a violent criminal goes badly, and Detective Sergeant Maddy Birch is uneasy about the reasons why, an uneasiness that is compounded when she starts to believe she is being stalked.

Maddy and Frank had a brief and clumsy encounter years before. In Ash & Bone their lives connect again when a second phone call persuades Elder out of retirement, only to find that a cold case has a devastating present-day impact.

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Cold in Hand

by John Harvey

It's Valentine’s Day, and a dispute between rival gangs leaves a teenage girl dead.

Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick, nearing retirement, is hauled back to the front line to help deal with the fallout. But when the dead girl’s father seeks to lay the blame on Resnick’s partner, DI Lynn Kellogg, Resnick finds the line between the personal and the professional dangerously blurred.

Meanwhile, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency starts to show a keen interest in one of Kellogg’s murder cases--a case the agency is convinced is linked to international gun running and people trafficking. Soon Kellogg is drawn into a web of deceit and betrayal that puts both her and Resnick in mortal danger.

In Cold In Hand, John Harvey brings back "one of the most fully realized characters in modern crime fiction" (Sue Grafton) in another heart-stopping procedural.

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Men in Black

by John Harvey

Mr. Pink:
"Why can't we pick out our own color?"

Joe:
"I tried that once, it don't work. You get four guys fighting over who's gonna be Mr. Black."

—Quentin Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs

Men's clothes went black in the nineteenth century. Dickens, Ruskin and Baudelaire all asked why it was, in an age of supreme wealth and power, that men wanted to dress as if going to a funeral. The answer is in this history of the color black. Over the last 1000 years there have been successive expansions in the wearing of black—from the Church to the Court, from the Court to the merchant class. Though black as fashion was often smart and elegant, its growth as a cultural marker was fed by several currents in Europe's history—in politics, asceticism, religious warfare. Only in the nineteenth century, however, did black fully come into its own as fashion, the most telling witnesses constantly saw connections between the taste for black and the forms of constraint with which European society regimented itself.

Concentrating on the general shift away from color that began around 1800, Harvey traces the transition to black from the court of Burgundy in the 15th century, through 16th-century Venice, 17th-century Spain and the Netherlands. He uses paintings from Van Eyck and Degas to Francis Bacon, religious art, period lithographs, wood engravings, costume books, newsphotos, movie stills and related sources in his compelling study of the meaning of color and clothes.

Although in the twentieth century tastes have moved toward new colors, black has retained its authority as well as its associations with strength and cruelty. At the same time black is still smart, and fashion keeps returning to black. It is, perhaps, the color that has come to acquire the greatest, most significant range of meaning in history.

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The Story of Black

by John Harvey

As a color, black comes in no other shades: it is a single hue with no variation, one half of a dichotomy. But what it symbolizes envelops the entire spectrum of meaning—good and bad. The Story of Black travels back to the biblical and classical eras to explore the ambiguous relationship the world’s cultures have had with this sometimes accursed color, examining how black has been used as a tool and a metaphor in a plethora of startling ways.

John Harvey delves into the color’s problematic association with race, observing how white Europeans exploited the negative associations people had with the color to enslave millions of black Africans. He then looks at the many figurative meanings of black—for instance, the Greek word melancholia, or black bile, which defines our dark moods, and the ancient Egyptians’ use of black as the color of death, which led to it becoming the standard hue for funereal garb and the clothing of priests, churches, and cults. Considering the innate austerity and gravity of black, Harvey reveals how it also became the color of choice for the robes of merchants, lawyers, and monarchs before gaining popularity with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century dandies and with Goths and other subcultures today. Finally, he looks at how artists and designers have applied the color to their work, from the earliest cave paintings to Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Rothko.

Asking how a single color can at once embody death, evil, and glamour, The Story of Black unearths the secret behind black’s continuing power to compel and divide us.

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No copies available.

The Story of Black

by John Harvey

As a color, black comes in no other shades: it is a single hue with no variation, one half of a dichotomy. But what it symbolizes envelops the entire spectrum of meaning—good and bad. The Story of Black travels back to the biblical and classical eras to explore the ambiguous relationship the world’s cultures have had with this sometimes accursed color, examining how black has been used as a tool and a metaphor in a plethora of startling ways.

John Harvey delves into the color’s problematic association with race, observing how white Europeans exploited the negative associations people had with the color to enslave millions of black Africans. He then looks at the many figurative meanings of black—for instance, the Greek word melancholia, or black bile, which defines our dark moods, and the ancient Egyptians’ use of black as the color of death, which led to it becoming the standard hue for funereal garb and the clothing of priests, churches, and cults. Considering the innate austerity and gravity of black, Harvey reveals how it also became the color of choice for the robes of merchants, lawyers, and monarchs before gaining popularity with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century dandies and with Goths and other subcultures today. Finally, he looks at how artists and designers have applied the color to their work, from the earliest cave paintings to Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Rothko.

Asking how a single color can at once embody death, evil, and glamour, The Story of Black unearths the secret behind black’s continuing power to compel and divide us.

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Body & Soul: A Frank Elder Mystery (Frank Elder Mysteries)

by John Harvey

From a master of modern crime writing comes the landmark last novel in the exemplary Frank Elder mystery series.

When his estranged daughter Katherine suddenly appears on his doorstep, Elder knows that something is badly wrong.

The breakdown of her relationship with a controversial artist has sent her into a self-destructive tailspin which culminates in murder. And as Elder struggles to protect Katherine and prove her innocence, the terrors of the past threaten them both once more.

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Darkness, Darkness (Resnick)

by John Harvey

Thirty years ago, the British Miners’ Strike threatened to tear england apart, turning neighbor against neighbor, husband against wife, father against son—enmities which still smolder.Charlie Resnick, recently promoted to Detective Inspector and ambivalent, at best, about some of the police tactics used in the Strike, had run an surveillance-gathering unit at the heart of the dispute.Now, in virtual retirement, the discovery of the body of a young woman who disappeared during the Strike brings Resnick back to the front line to assist in the investigation into the woman’s murder—forcing him to confront his past—in what will assuredly be his last case . . . as well as John’s Harvey’s final Charlie Resnick novel.

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Loss and Trauma: General and Close Relationship Perspectives (Series in Death, Dying, and Bereavement)

by John Harvey, Eric Miller

Given the relationship between trauma, loss, and interpersonal bonds, the editors have assembled a noteworthy list of contributions discussing trauma associated with close relationships (divorce, infertility, widowhood). Certainly, trauma is closely associated with loss.
This edited volume offers the perspective of over twenty leading scholars in the study of trauma and loss. Each chapter offers extensive coverage of contemporary issues (terror management, rational suicide, spirituality, stigmatization). Relationship issues within these topics are also explored.

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Daggers Drawn

by Denise Mina, Ian Rankin, Jeffery Deaver, John Connolly, John Harvey, Lauren Henderson, Peter Lovesey, Martin Edwards, Stella Duffy, Peter O'Donnell, Julian Rathbone, Danuta Reah, Margaret Murphy, Cath Staincliffe

Edgy, twisted and disturbing, the first Crime Writers’ Association Daggers Award retrospective anthology featuring 19 visceral and thrilling stories.

Featuring bestselling authors Ian Rankin, Jeffery Deaver, John Connolly, Denise Mina, John Harvey and more.

NINETEEN CWA DAGGER AWARD-WINNING SHORT STORIES FROM THE BEST OF THE BEST IN CRIME FICTION

The first retrospective of the CWA’s Dagger Award winners, brings together some of the greatest names in crime fiction to deliver a cutthroat collection of serial killers, grizzled detectives, drug dealers and master forgers.

Observe as a Senior Curator at the Tate Gallery constructs the perfect crime in Ian Rankin’s “Herbert in Motion”. Watch an unlikely romance sour into a deadly obsession in Stella Duffy’s “Martha Grace”. Face parents who discover their child has committed the unthinkable in Denise Mina’s “Nemo Me Impune Lacessit”. And in Jeffery Deaver’s “The Weekender” an intense hostage situation hits its peak in the most unlikely conclusion.

Keep your secrets close, and your daggers drawn.

Featuring: Peter O' Donnell (writing as Madeleine Brent), Julian Rathbone, Larry Beinhart, Ian Rankin, Jerry Sykes, Stella Duffy, Jeffery Deaver, Peter Lovesey, Cath Staincliffe, Margaret Murphy, John Harvey, Richard Lange, L. C. Tyler, Denise Mina, Danutah Reah and Lauren Henderson.

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