3 Stars from me
I was very excited at the thought of reading about the early days of Jane Tennison; such an iconic figure of the genre.
For me, although the story was great it just dragged on with so much unnecessary padding that I feel I have to only score it 3 stars. It could easily have been a much slicker, grittier book with a decent amount of editing and I simply don’t understand why it wasn’t done.
Moving on from that, I found the use of 70s vocabulary to be ok but the narrative style of continually telling me how big Jane’s boobs were was just naff. Demeaning, insulting, sexist and naff.
Having said all of that, once I pushed those thoughts to one side, I actually did enjoy the story and I’m pretty sure that a heavily edited version of Tennison would have been outstanding. No doubt it was ideally written for TV and will make for a great program.
Synopsis: From the creator of the award-winning ITV series Prime Suspect, starring Helen Mirren, comes the fascinating back story of the iconic DCI Jane Tennison.
In 1973 Jane Tennison, aged 22, leaves the Metropolitan Police Training Academy to be placed on probationary exercise in Hackney where criminality thrives. We witness her struggle to cope in a male-dominated, chauvinistic environment, learning fast to deal with shocking situations with no help or sympathy from her superiors. Then comes her involvement in her first murder case.
Read and Rated 