What is in a name? As an A-Level student of French in the late 1980s, Manon has always called to mind a beautiful, wrathful French peasant girl who wreaks revenge upon her neighbours for their wicked treatment of her father. (As incentives to learn French go, Manon des Sources, starring Emmanuelle Béart, is right up there.)
It is likely therefore that I was pre-programmed to fall for Manon Bradshaw, the detective at the heart of Susie Steiner´s Huntingdon detective novels, the best new series of recent years. Manon herself ponders the power of names early in the third novel, Remain Silent: "the best names, Manon is thinking, have rhythm... Perhaps she should change hers to Manon de Bradshaw."
Manon, as I observed in this review of the first novel in the series, Missing, Presumed, is one of the best drawn characters in fiction. "She is authentic, nuanced, complex and engaging; she is strong in the job, confused and vulnerable away from it. You will want to meet her again." Two novels later and this holds. In truth, Steiner has given Manon greater depth. A few years on from the events of the second book, Persons Unknown, she is juggling the competing demands of nursing a very ill husband, bringing up a young child and running an investigation into the death of Lukas, a young Lithuanian migrant.
Away from the investigation she is riddled with anxiety and self doubt: about her weight, her loss of youth, her parenting skills, her marriage, her life. But outside of herself and her troubles she speaks and acts with relentless clarity and sense of purpose, burning with anger about the injustices of the world and its perfidious inhabitants.
The book´s two most memorable passages come when she is administering advice first to her best friend´s cheating husband and then to her loyal DS, Davy. In the first she assumes the role of Ghost of Christmas Future, offering Bryony´s straying husband a vision of the nuclear winter his life will become if he doesn´t go back to his wife. This is writing of the highest order: if you read it once, you´ll want to read it again. In the second, more sensitively but no less effectively she advises Davy to get a grip on his own soon-to-be-marriage if he doesn´t want it destroyed before even getting down the aisle.
Manon de Bradshaw (as I now cannot help but think of her): fierce friend.
Fierce friend and great cop. There´s so much going on in Remain Silent, that the plot sometimes plays second fiddle to the personal drama. But it´s a good one: contemporary and important. The late Lukas was a modern slave, brought to Britain to work in agriculture in appalling conditions for a wage so small it will never pay off the debt he owes his gang masters. Despite he and his fellow eastern Europeans doing vital work - that current circumstances are showing that Brits will not - their presence is resented by many locals, who egged on by right wing agitators and commentators, create their own hostile environment.
Manon´s investigation focuses on the possibility either an angry "patriot" or a gang master has killed Lukas. The narrative gives Steiner ample opportunity to focus her own wrath on the parlous state of post Brexit vote Britain: an isolationist, divided, angry, unsympathetic land led by unprincipled, opportunistic and incompetent politicians. Her aim is true and the strike devastating.
It´s a great book with everything you want from a novel: strong, engaging narrative; rigorously researched detail; characters you want to see again - and in particular Manon, a woman for our times.
Like all the books I love the most, it felt intensely personal and I carried it around in my head during the days I was reading it. Let us hope there are more.