Have you ever read a book that when you finished (maybe even before you finished) you thought, yes, this is exactly what I wanted? I like an author who can take me wholly and utterly out of my own life, if even for a little while, and drop me into someone else's so completely. A comfort read of sorts, though there's nothing especially comforting about the world Michael Robotham describes in The Night Ferry. Robotham's world is one of murderous deeds and exploitation and concerns the dark underbelly of society, a world that surely exists, but that's not necessarily discussed on the nightly news. I sometimes wonder if an author is threading the narrative with social commentary, but in this case I think he's simply portraying the uglier side of human greed through contemporary events. And this is a crime novel, so where better to look for subject matter than in the dark corners where no one wants to look.
"It was Graham Greene who said a story has no beginning or end. The author simply chooses a moment, an arbitrary point, and looks either forward or back. That moment is now--an October morning--when the clang of a metallic letter flap heralds the first post."
For Detective Alisha Barba the arbitrary moment is when she receives a letter from an old schoolfriend she lost touch with years ago. Sixteen simple words will send her world spinning. I'm in trouble. I must see you. Please come to the reunion. Ali and Cate were inseparable as schoolgirls, brought together through a violent act yet later wedged apart through a thoughtless act of betrayal. Now eight years later a frantic Cate is in some sort of trouble, but before she has a chance to fully explain she and her husband are run over by a motorist. Ali knows only that her friend is more than eight months pregnant and was in fear that someone was trying to take her baby.
Narrated in the first person, Ali Barba is an interesting study, not the least because she's a strong, independent woman who happens to be a Sikh. Why did that surprise me when I first began getting a fuller picture of her. Her family may be a traditional and even conventional Indian immigrant family, but Ali has a mind of her own and can hold her own in a difficult situation. She does, however, tend to rush into situations that she shouldn't and has a small issue with commitments. In a multicultural society her background serves her well for the problems and people she is going to encounter, so Robotham was wise in his creation of Ali.
Technically Detective Constable Barba is on leave from the department having broken her back the previous year while helping find a missing girl. Six operations later she's back in form. She was almost good enough to make the Olympic team as a runner, but she only runs now because she can--fast enough to make the edges blur. She's set to begin a desk job when the death of her friend draws her into investigating the crime on her own with the help of a couple of friends, including her old (now retired) partner, Vincent Ruiz. Ruiz is a hard-edged, slightly cantankerous old cop, but there's an obvious affection and respect between the two. And Ruiz knows what's what, totally savvy in darker side of London life.
Ali begins looking into her friend's life and asking questions, but the answers become more complicated than clearer the more she learns. Eventually all roads will lead to Amsterdam and even farther away, to Afghanistan before she's able to understand what happened to her friend Cate. And Cate is only one small piece in a much larger and messier puzzle that if solved might well disrupt the lives of many people.
The Night Ferry is an excellent thriller and all the accolades it's received are richly deserved. It's tightly and intricately plotted and Robotham moves from place to place and back in forth in time and between characters' lives so smoothly you don't even realize it's happening. I didn't know when I first picked this up that some of the characters have appeared in his earlier novels beginning with Suspect, Lost, The Night Ferry, and the most recent release here in the US, Shatter. (By the way--if you are curious about the books, note that US and UK titles are not always the same). It won't be long before I go back and start from the beginning!