HENNESSEY and YELLICH – Peter Turnbull

Peter Turnbull is the author of seventeen novels in the Hennessey and Yellich police procedural series set in York, England.  DELIVER US FROM EVIL  is the most recent.

Turnbull has an unusual method of making his characters accessible no matter which book in the series is read first.  In each book he gives a little biography of each man.  Detective Chief Inspector George Hennessey is a widower.  His wife died suddenly when their son, Charles, was an infant.  Hennessey raised Charles in the house and in the garden that his wife had planned; now Charles is a solicitor, husband, and father.  Hennessey lives with his dog, reads military history, and takes a walk each night to the local pub where he has one pint of bitter.  He gets around the city of York by walking the ancient walls and each evening, when he gets home from work, he goes to the garden and tells his wife about his day.

Detective Sergeant Somerled ( pronounced Sorley) Yellich is happily married to Sara.  They are the parents of Jeremy, born with Down’s Syndrome.  He is happy in his work and he is happy in his home.

If police procedurals can be placed in the cozy category, then the Hennessey and Yellich series qualifies.  Victims die off the page; usually a body is found within the first few pages to get the story moving.  DELIVER US FROM EVIL begins with the discovery of the body of a woman sitting on the banks of a river, dead of hypothermia.  But when pathologist Louise D’Acre performs the postmortem, she discovers that  the woman had been murdered, likely having been held against her will for a few days.   She was an intelligent women.  She had managed to get a piece of a utility bill and hid it in her shoe.  Discovering the place she was held captive leads, gradually, to discovering her identity, sort of.  She had been reported missing by her husband who confesses that they have been married for eighteen months and she refused to answer any questions about her past.  She rarely left the house and when she did she wore a blond wig and dark glasses.  Although she had been living in England for some time, she was Canadian, giving Yellich the opportunity for a trip.  The police have to discover who needs to be delivered from evil.

The entire series is worth reading.  They are perfect books with which to relax.  Hennessey and Yellich are low-key, no one in any interrogation they conduct would be in danger of police brutality.

If anyone wants to read the series in order, it is best to check Stop You’re Killing Me.  Many, if not all, the books list the series in alphabetical order.