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    Backlash
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    Backlash
    Unavailable
    Backlash
    Audiobook (abridged)4 hours

    Backlash

    Written by Lynda La Plante

    Narrated by Samantha Bond

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

       It is late at night on a notorious council estate in east London. A van - garishly painted with a grinning clown's face on the side - is being driven erratically. When the police pull over the driver to question him, they discover, inside the van, the body of a young woman.
     

       A murder suspect . . . an arrest . . . a confession . . . A case done and dusted? But their suspect claims his victim is not his first, but his third.
     

       Five years earlier, a 13-year-old girl disappeared in broad daylight on a busy London street. DCS James Langton headed the investigation and left no stone unturned. The fact that case was not solved has haunted him ever since. The enquiry has opened up again but, unable to lead it due to ill health, Langton brings in DCI Anna Travis. Meanwhile the murder team begins the laborious task of verifying the details of the confessions and uncovering the identity of the second victim.
     

       And then the suspect changes his story. They know they have a murderer  in custody - but is he a serial killer or just a compulsive liar?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio UK
    Release dateJul 19, 2012
    ISBN9781471114458
    Unavailable
    Backlash
    Author

    Lynda La Plante

    Lynda La Plante's many novels, including the Prime Suspect series, have all been international bestsellers. She is an honorary fellow of the British Film Institute and a member of the UK Crime Writers Awards Hall of Fame. She was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in 2008. She runs her own television production company and lives in London and Easthampton, New York. Visit her website at LyndaLaPlante.com.

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    Reviews for Backlash

    3.5/5

    65 ratings7 reviews

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    • 2/5
      It's been a few years since I'd read any of Ms La Plante's books but this felt like she had given up and just phoned in the story.

      The text read like a list of events being recited by a narrator and the characters' voices were artificial, as if it were robots reading lines.

      And the story ... very weak. The only reason the cops had any suspect was because he was found with one body then bragged about his kill list in the first few pages. Yet the whole way through Anna Travis is congratulating herself on her great police work.

      Nah, waste of time, this.
    • 4/5
      In this novel, the suspense is not built around the chase of the murderer but rather the careful reconstruction of events as the culprit leads the detectives down various leads. It doesn't have the same panache as other books with sensational revelations, but the careful investigation holds enough surprises to string the reader along. The ending is rather exaggerated in an attempt to finish with a flourish, but LaPlante's attention to detail and well-developed characters give her book substance.
    • 2/5
      Somewhere under the excessive handwringing and redundant summarization of evidence in this book there was a solid police procedural but getting to it was a struggle. Could have benefited from severe editing. There are fun reads, then there are reads like this - agonizingly dense. Full review will be posted once published in Deadly Pleasures.
    • 4/5
      BACKLASH is an Anna Travis Mystery (Book #8) written by Lynda La Plante.A chance ‘pull over’ of an erratically driven van leads to the discovery of a brutally murdered woman and a full investigation by the Murder Squad. What they uncover leads to the opening of several ‘Cold Case’ Missing Persons Files.A very suspenseful crime drama and police procedural, I couldn’t put it down.James Langton continues to be an insufferable jerk, however, and Anna Travis’s expertise is seldom appreciated or acknowledged.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic read if murder mysteries are your thing! I didn't want to put it down! My only regret is starting this series with this book as it's #8 in the series. I've already searched out #1 and planning to catch up. Great characters and great writing!
    • 4/5
      Lynda La Plante's name was always one I recognized, but until last year I hadn't read any of her books. That quickly changed and I've added her to my list of favourite British mystery authors. La Plante writes a number of series and many have been adapted for television, such as Above Suspicion and Prime Suspect. (These are incredibly popular at the library.)Bourbon Street Books latest La Plante release is Backlash, the eighth book in the series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Anna Travis.A late night traffic stop on a van advertising clowns and kid's parties yields one surprise the uniformed officers didn't expect - the body of a woman hidden in back. The driver, Henry Oates, claims that she wasn't the first - and mentions two other young women who have been missing for years. One of the missing is a thirteen year old girl. Her case is one that Detective Chief Superintendent James Langton never solved and it haunts him. But then Oates recants.....Still recovering from surgery that has immobilized him, Langton is forced to let Anna and her team work the case without him.I was eager to reconnect with Travis and the rest of the team. Anna has still never really dealt with the death of her fiancée and drives herself to keep her mind and body occupied. She's a character I really like - she's smart, tough and driven. My opinion of Langton is ever-changing - he's rude, brusque, opinionated, but just when I think he has no redeeming qualities, he surprises me. Travis is quickly catching up to her superior in leadership and deductive skills. Familiar supporting characters provided a comfortable home base."She was gaining a reputation as a very dedicated officer with her tough no -nonsense attitude and almost obsessive attention to detail."As always, La Plante has crafted a wonderfully involved plot that was a treat to read. We have the guilty party right at the beginning, but it's up to the team to prove their case. And this is where La Plante shines. I really enjoy the pacing of British mysteries - the careful, methodical piecing together of information obtained through painstaking legwork. The case builds layer upon layer, but La Plante has more than one twist up her sleeve before the final reveal.La Plante has a screenwriting background and some of the descriptions, action and dialogue read like a screenplay - short and to the point, at times pointedly directional. But, I stopped noticing this about fifty pages in and became engrossed in the case. Backlash kept me interested right 'til the last pages. Fans of police procedurals - this one's for you. Those that haven't read previous Travis books would be able to jump in and enjoy this book, but I always enjoy starting a series from book one. (Above Suspicion) Definitely a recommended read.
    • 1/5
      I'd forgotten what the series of these books were about by this author , and were very dissapointed as per the last novel, the main character Anna is pathetic and the storylines are weak and based on her love life or lack of , rather than the crime in the novel . Dissapointing , I must remember not to read these books again.