Cold as Marble: A Likeness in Stone

A Likeness in Stone by J.Wallis Martin

New English Library

Pp. 361

In the powerful opening scene of the novel, two divers exploring an old flooded house at the bottom of a reservoir find a decomposed body in a wardrobe. We soon discover it is that of Helena Warner, an undergraduate reading English at Somerville College, Oxford, who went missing twenty years ago. At the time, Thames Valley Chief Inspector Bill Driver, was convinced that she had been killed by her lover, Ian Gilmore, but with no body, the case was never solved. Now it is re-opened by the new policeman on the job, Detective Superintendent Rigby, who works with Driver to try to bring Gilmore to justice. It may be set in the same cosy world as Morse and Midsommer Murders (and it was made into a miniseries starring Andrew Lincoln and Ruth Jones) but it is far more grim than that, because, “horror wasn’t choosy. It manifested in the most unlikely of places, and in various guises.”

Of course, this is a mystery, so nothing is as it initially appears, and submerged secrets rise to the surface, as the timeline shifts back and forth. Helena was part of a group of friends who don’t actually like each other very much and still have affiliations and implications many years later. These three university associates are all implicated in a very dark world which includes sadism and psychopaths.

Rigby and Driver must work together to solve the case despite their different methods. Driver looks down upon Rigby whom he dismisses as, “Well-dressed, intelligent-looking; no doubt the product of one of these new-fangled schemes that sends graduates shooting up a ladder Driver had to climb rung by painful rung, year after frustrating year.”

Women are victims; objects to be possessed and preserved in youth before they age and supposedly lose their beauty. Other examples of casual sexism and lazy stereotypes are scattered throughout the novel. Artists are troubled and odd; mental health facilities are a comfortable alternative to a hard life; computers are new (it was published in 1997) and, apparently, the police one is female, “What’s more, this little sweetie was a redhead. One false move and she could go off on one, no trouble.”

This gripping and clinical, fast-paced police procedural has been likened to the work of Ruth Rendell or Minette Walters. It is certainly dark and moody with a chilling aspect. “Real evil, unlike the romanticised fantasy of evil, was merely gloomy, monotonous and boring… The majority of murders were committed not with malice, but with indifference, by people who lived in the type of environment that deadened the soul.” It is eerie, creepy, and a thoroughly captivating thriller.