After a hiatus, veteran police procedural author John Harvey turns in this second outing with his new character, having exhausted his Charlie Resnick series of ten books. After a several year interval, presumably to recharge his fiction battery and absorb himself into the life of a new alter ego companion, Harvey initiated the Frank Elder series last year with "Flesh and Blood." "Ash & Bone" seems a likely sequel title to follow.

Not all detectives are young bucks and, as mystery writers age, perspectives change. Older characters are born to carry a new kind of load. Frank Elder is just that man. He's a retired detective, formerly of the Nottinghamshire Force. Not that he's considered worthless. Old buddy Robert Framlingham has been in touch, trying to get Elder to join his squad of recently retired detectives to apply their knowledge and time to cold cases and add a fresh perspective to ongoing, stalled ones. But this "Murder Review Unit" doesn't quite suit Elder's current needs and interests.

For one, he's trying to deal with the breakup of his marriage to Joanne. For another, he's trying to repair his severed relationship with his teenage daughter Katherine who was the victim of a brutal rape a year ago. Now, she scorns a father who has been away, on the job, most of her life. And Frank is none too pleased with the company she's keeping.

But the event that draws Elder back to the force is something he can't ignore. Through the first 8 chapters, Harvey describes the life and work of Det. Sgt. Maddy Birch, a 44-year old ex-associate of his that Elder has had carnal knowledge of and respect for as a colleague. Maddy is backup in a takedown of a wanted criminal and becomes a near victim, then a witness to a police shooting by her superior officer, Superintendent Mallory, that seems too cold blooded and uncalled-for to be anything but a setup killing.

As the witness who won't lie or misrepresent what she observed to the official enquiry investigating the shooting, one hidden threat leads to another and, just as we start feeling comfortable in her warm and spunky determination and her presence as a central character in the case, her body is found early one morning 40 feet down the muddied bank of a disused railway line. When Elder reads of it, he calls Framlingham and soon takes his place in the investigation under Det. Chief Inspector Karen Shields.

Pertinently, the solution to the mystery does have to do with a cold case--one that someone has been keeping obscure and dormant for some time.

Thus, several balls in the air for Elder, opening up new avenues of inquiry, new relationships, and old wounds. A certain amount of detecting cliche' and a voice that's almost as drearily straightforward as Elder's shabby shack in Cornwall, produces a plodding mystery but not an altogether unpleasing one. I'm basically drawn to the Elder character who has what many an enduring fictional hero has: emotional empathy and a backbone of good conduct. I'm willing to bet the next Elder mystery will have a sharper edge.