Bleeding Heart Yard: A Novel

by Elly Griffiths

Hardcover, 2022

Call number

MYST GRI

Genres

Publication

Mariner Books (2022), 352 pages

Description

Fiction. Mystery. HTML: A murderer strikes at a school reunionâ??but the students are no strangers to deathâ?? in this propulsive, twisty thriller from the internationally bestselling author of the Ruth Galloway Mysteries Is it possible to forget that you've committed a murder? When Cassie Fitzgerald was at school in the late 90s, she and her friends killed a fellow student. Almost twenty years later, Cassie is a happily married mother who loves her jobâ??as a police officer. She closely guards the secret she has all but erased from her memory. One day her husband finally persuades her to go to a school reunion. Cassie catches up with her high-achieving old friends from the Manor Park Schoolâ??among them two politicians, a rock star, and a famous actress. But then, shockingly, one of them, Garfield Rice, is found dead in the school bathroom, supposedly from a drug overdose. As Garfield was an eminentâ??and controversialâ??MP and the investigation is high profile, it's headed by Cassie's new boss, DI Harbinder Kaur, freshly promoted and newly arrived in London. The trouble is, Cassie can't shake the feeling that one of them has killed again. Is Cassie right, or was Garfield murdered by one of his political cronies? It's in Cassie's interest to skew the investigation so that it looks like it has nothing to do with Manor Park and she seems to be succeeding. Until someone else from the reunion is found dead in Bleeding… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
Not at all up to the standard I've come to expect from this author. I enjoy the character of Harbinder Kaur, and I hope Griffiths is not through with her. But she sure has more potential than was apparent in this one. At a high school reunion, a man who is now an MP turns up dead. This causes the
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usual shock, grief and suspicion among his old classmates, but it also stirs up memories of another death among them that happened in their last school year--a death precipitated by events that they all seem to remember differently. There are too many versions of that long-ago tragedy; too many pages devoted to multiple perspectives on it, none of which seem to be leading the reader anywhere; and too little "detecting" going on. It was never clear to me why the police should have taken any interest at all in a 15-year-old death that wasn't even considered suspicious when it happened. Any tension built up along the way was released in a fizzle, and the final reveal came out of the blue in an extreme example of the "it's the one person nobody even considered suspecting" technique, making 200+ pages of uncertain memories, inter-character action and police work (such as it was) totally irrelevant. Having finished the book, I recognize one clue that could have pointed to the actual killer, but the author and the police mostly dismissed it; maybe I should have picked up on it for that very reason, but it would have felt like a wild conjecture. Misdirection can be fun to spot and see through, but here it was just manipulation, so I feel cheated. I gave this title 2 stars, for the character development bits. Plot-wise, it was a full FAIL for me.
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LibraryThing member quondame
The suspicious death at the 21st reunion of a class of a posh London comprehensive school is Harbinder Kaur's first case as a DI and though her viewpoint is important, the real drama comes from two women with very different memories of the tragedy 21 years before that might be the cause of this new
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death. I found the resolution less than satisfying, but enjoyed the read.
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LibraryThing member Twink
Bleeding Heart Yard is the third book in Elly Griffiths' Harbinder Kaur series.

For me, it is Griffiths' characters that that have made me such a fan. Yes, Ruth Galloway is my fave, but Harbinder is a close second. She too, is not a cookie cutter character. She's 'real'and her personal life has
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been moving forward. I really like her inner dialogue. Her professional life is moving forward as well. She's landed in London with her own squad as a Detective Inspector. The squad is a mixed bag of new players - that I hope will become regulars.

Harbinder's first 'in charge' case is a puzzle for sure. A MP is found dead at his school's twenty-first reunion. There are a number of suspects to choose from for the whodunit. But the focus ends up on the members of 'The Group' - an 'elite' group of students. It took me a few chapters to solidify who was who in the group, specifically the women.

Bleeding Heart is written from a number of viewpoints - Harbinder's and group members Anna and Cassie. Anna and Cassie's past entries give the reader background, memories and motives - for each and every player. They're all hiding something. Present day chapters let us see how the investigation is proceeding, even as events from the past take on more of a motive for the current day crime. I did find the numerous interviews a bit repetitive.

The settings descriptions are well drawn and I quite liked the lore behind some of them - especially Bleeding Heart Yard. I think Harbinder's change of locale will open up a lot of opportunities for future cases and plots. And for Harbinder's personal life!

All in all, Bleeding Heart Yard is another great entry in this series. A little bit slower than the previous two books but still a very entertaining read. And a quick P.S. - that cover is fantastic!
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LibraryThing member cathyskye
I enjoy Elly Griffiths' writing so much that I'm beginning to think that her grocery lists should make the bestseller list, too. Many writers can "do" the mystery and the setting, but extremely few can combine those two elements with a finely crafted and multi-layered cast of characters. When you
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pick up an Elly Griffiths novel, it's a given that you're going to love, not just the main character(s), but the secondary ones as well. Bleeding Heart Yard is no exception.

Although Griffiths never intended for the lesbian Sikh police officer to be a recurring character, I am thrilled that this is now the third book in which Harbinder Kaur has appeared. In Bleeding Heart Yard, she's been promoted and is now living in London with two roommates, a teacher and an architect. I enjoyed seeing how she works with her team-- Cassie, who must stay out of the investigation because she's a member of the group of school friends linked to the dead man; the empathetic Kim who has an encyclopedic knowledge of London restaurants; the not-so-bright Tory; and the manspreading Jake. The book is told from various points of view, but Harbinder's is the best. Her thoughts and observations illuminate her character, and they're often quite humorous. Before I forget, a trio of characters from The Postscript Murders makes an appearance here, and it gives me hope that we may see them again. (Remember what I said about Griffiths' genius for characterization?)

Okay, enough about the characters. What about the mystery? Glory hallelujah-- I never saw the ending coming, and that's a rare occurrence for me. I love it when that happens, especially when I stop, think back, and can see where all the clues were planted. Clues that I ignored because I was enjoying the characters and the story so much.

Do you have series burnout and just don't want to start at book one (The Stranger Diaries)? Bleeding Heart Yard works well as a standalone, so confusion should not be a problem. However, don't be surprised if you find yourself looking for the other two books, and if you're new to Elly Griffiths (I almost envy you), she also writes the splendid Dr. Ruth Galloway series. Don't miss Ruth or Harbinder!
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LibraryThing member foggidawn
Detective Harbinder Kaur has just moved to London. She's now a Detective Inspector, and head of a murder squad. When her first case turns out to be the death of a prominent politician at his high school reunion, little does she expect that a member of her team will be closely involved in the
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case.

This was as enjoyable as the other mysteries in this series. I wasn't sure that I would enjoy the London setting as much, but that wasn't an issue. I did feel that the halfhearted attempt to pull in her old friends from the last book in the epilogue wasn't particularly successful, but perhaps if I had just read that book and was still feeling more of an emotional attachment to them, I would have liked it better. All in all, a fun read. I think this could be read as a stand-alone, due to the change of setting.
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LibraryThing member pgchuis
I enjoyed this, and read it in one sitting, although I did find the solution to the murders extremely unlikely and also entirely impossible for the reader to have guessed. I like Harbinder, and the sections about her new home life in London were interesting. The sections from the perspectives of
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Anna and Cassie were confusing, because the voices were identical and I had to keep checking whose chapter it was.
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LibraryThing member lauralkeet
Detective Inspector Harbinder Kaur, recently promoted to a position in London, is assigned her first high-profile case: a murder at a school reunion. The victim, a Member of Parliament, was part of a tight social circle during his school years. These classmates were all present at the reunion, and
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one of them might be the killer. The case may also have its roots in the death of a student during the group’s final days at the school.

Harbinder immediately takes charge and assembles her team, but the reader is also privy to Harbinder’s inner monologue and personal life, where she struggles with the insecurities typical of someone new to their job and community. Readers are also privy to the memories and present-day actions of the victim’s classmates. A second death further complicates the situation. Elly Griffiths effectively led me by the nose to what I thought was a foregone conclusion, and I was beginning to feel frustrated by how obvious it was. But not to worry, there’s a twist!

Griffiths has hit her stride in this third book featuring Harbinder Kaur, and I hope she continues to develop the detective and her London team in future installments.
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LibraryThing member smik
While this was written with the author's usual aplomb and skill, my main beef with the plot was the final resolution which felt plucked out of nowhere, and, looking back through the plot, I didn't feel there were many hints for the reader.

The book developed Harbinder Kaur's career and her social
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life. Apart from that it told us that when something traumatic happens, most of us will not remember the finer details, or may even interpret them incorrectly.

A good read. I recommend reading the two earlier books in the series first.
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LibraryThing member Eyejaybee
Elly Griffiths must be one of our most productive crime fiction writers, regularly publishing two books each year, without ever letting that level of output to compromise the quality of her novels. They always feel lovingly crafted rather than churned out, which is sadly the epithet so often
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unthinkingly applied to the output of prolific authors. She already has two well-established series, one following Dr Ruth Galloway, senior lecturer in archaeology at the University of North Norfolk, while the other follows stage magician Max Mephisto and Detective Superintendent Edgar Stephens as they unravel mysteries in Brighton during the 1950s and 1960s.

However, Ms Griffiths has also embarked on another equally engaging series, of which this is the third instalment, following the cases of (now) Detective Inspector Harbinder Kaur. In her first two exploits she had been back in her native Sussex, but Harbinder has secured promotion and moved up to serve in the Met, based in West London. Still eager to establish herself in her new role, and not yet feeling properly established in London, she finds herself leading the investigation into the death of a prominent right-wing politician who has died in unusual circumstances while attending a reunion at his old school. To make things more difficult, one of Harbinder’s Detective Sergeants was a fellow pupil of the dead man and had also been at the reunion.

It had clearly been a notable cohort of pupils in that year. The dead man’s friends back then had included pupils who would go on to become a leading actress, a successful rock star, the future headteacher of that very school, and another (Lib-Dem) MP. As Harbinder and the rest of her now-depleted team start to investigate, they uncover undercurrents of strong feelings left over from schooldays. And then another of the group is found dead in Bleeding Heart Yard.

There are various strands of investigation which, as always, Elly Griffiths manages with great dexterity. She excels at creating characters that provoke fellow feeling – that is as true of Ruth Galloway and Edgar Stephens (and especially Emma Holmes) as it is of Harbinder. These are all characters whom I would be delighted to meet.
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LibraryThing member Spencer28
Harbinder Kaur has a new job in London as DI in charge of her own team, and she gets a doozy of a case--the apparent drug overdose of an MP at his school reunion. To complicate matters, one of her sergeants was at the reunion. A story told in several voices--chapters alternate in POV from
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Harbinder, Cassie (the sergeant), and others-- takes us on a trip into the past and present, and reminds us that perception is everything. A wonderful step forward for Harbinder, both professionally and personally, and an intriguing tale to boot! This may be my favorite of the three stories featuring Harbinder Kaur.

Thanks to Mariner Books for access to a digital ARC via NetGalley.
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LibraryThing member SandyAMcPherson
Oh come on Elly Griffiths, you can do better than this. While I certainly enjoyed The Postscript Murders in this series, the plotting in Book 3 is a disappointment, never equalling the wonderful twists and reveals of Book 2. Harbinder isn't the same feisty character. The biggest flaw was Griffiths'
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pulling illogical actions out of the blue and she evidently understood nothing about the limitations of using a hand gun to shoot at a distant victim. Not a satisfying story for me at all.
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LibraryThing member nbmars
This is the third book in the author’s series featuring Harbinder Kaur, formerly a Detective Sergeant in the West Sussex, England Murder Squad, but now promoted to Detective Inspector in the Criminal Investigation Department of the Metropolitan Police in West Kensington, London. Harbinder, 38,
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finally moved out from living with her parents to take this job. Harbinder is peppery, witty, and very clever, albeit always feeling a bit out of place as a gay Sikh woman. She has not told her two flatmates in London she is gay. She gets along well however with Jeanne, a teacher from Scotland, and Mette, a tall Danish-born architect. But she is afraid to reveal who she really is.

As the book begins, Harbinder and her team are called to investigate the murder of an MP, Garfield (“Gary”) Rice, while he was attending the 21st reunion of the class of 1998 from London’s posh Manor Park school. Harbinder is surprised to find one of her officers, Detective Sergeant Cassie Fitzherbert, was from the same class at the same school and also attended the reunion. Since Cassie was a witness, she could not be involved with the case.

Harbinder soon focuses on a group of friends which included Gary Rice. All the members of his clique were at the reunion: Isabelle (“Izzy”) Istar, now a well-known actress; Henry Steep, also an MP; Chris Foster, now a famous band member; Anna Vance, a language teacher in Italy; and Cassie herself.

The group is tied together not only by friendship, but by the death of fellow classmate David Moore at the end of their senior year. Since that time, at least some members of the group occasionally attended lunches with Rice at a dining club in "Bleeding Heart Yard" in Holborn. Moreover, shortly before his death Gary had received anonymous notes that read “bleeding heart,” a few of which also included a drawing of a heart with an arrow through it.

There are plenty of tantalizing leads and red herrings, especially after another member of the group is found dead.

Harbinder is only one of the narrators in the book; we get to see what happens with group members from multiple viewpoints.

Evaluation: Fans of Tana French will be reminded frequently of the Dublin Murder Squad book, The Secret Place. It wasn’t the similarities in the story line so much, although both were set in elite schools, but the style of writing. It would have been hard for me to remember it was by Elly Griffiths, were it not for the occasional injection of very funny observations by Harbinder. At any rate, I consider any likeness to Tana French to be a very positive aspect of a book, and the combination with Griffiths’s slightly different strong writing points made for an excellent novel.

One can’t help loving Griffiths’ recurring characters, and I can’t wait to read more about them.
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LibraryThing member rmarcin
This. is the 3rd book in the Kaur Harbinder sale. When friends reunite and remember their school years, they are concerned when another member of their group is killed. Harbinder steps in to investigate, and one of her officers, Cassie, is nervous, as she is one of the friends. She remembers that
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they all lured one of the boys to the railroad tracks where he died. They all kept quiet about it for years, but now, another of their group died suspiciously, and Cassie is distraught.
Kaur tries to understand the connection to the bleeding heart yard, and scrutinizes the group's past.
I enjoyed this one as much as I enjoyed the other Harbinder book I read. I am enjoying this series.
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LibraryThing member Judiex
Twenty one years after their high school graduation, a group of alumni from Manor Park School, get together with fellow graduates at their first reunion. The six, who had been close friends, include Garfield (Gary) Rice and Henry Steep, two Members of Parliament; Isabelle Istar, a famous actress;
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Kris Foster, a rock star; Cassie Fitzherbert, a police officer; Anna Vance, who had moved to Italy but returned to England to spend time with her dying mother; and a seventh, Sonoma Davies, Headteacher at Manor Park.
The classmates have a shared secret. Soon after they finished their final exams, the body of one of their classmates, David Moore, was found near the train tracks. Because of traces of heroin on his nose and the presence of insulin in his body, his death was ruled accidental.
But the members of the group know much more. David had raped and attempted to rape some of the girls. Their revenge was to get him to the abandoned train station and threaten him. It obviously went beyond that but was never thoroughly investigated.
The evening of the reunion, the body of one of the members of the group was found near the loo in the school and the police, lead by Detective Inspector Harbinder Kaur, began it’s investigation. Another death soon follows.
At the reunion, memories of David’s death brought them together again as they try to figure out what really happened then and now.
The chapters are related primarily by Harbinder, Cassie, and Anna, each of whom has a different perspective.
There is a lot of repetition, sometimes identical, sometimes not, throughout the book. Old relationships are rekindled, old memories reexamined.
The ending is totally unexpected and somewhat unrealistic. One clue, that should have been spotted earlier is ignored. The switching from past tense to present tense and back again is confusing. The epilogue, a month later, briefly tells what happened to each of the characters since the crimes were resolved.
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LibraryThing member ccayne
The plotting and writing are strong as is Harbinder Kaur, a new DI. I found some aspects of the case over wrought and not believable. That said, I couldn't put it down. Harbinder makes another appearance, I look forward to it.
LibraryThing member ffortsa
Harbinder Kaur has been promoted! And moved to London! But she is a little unsure of how to be a manager and leader of a completely new team. When an MP is murdered at a class reunion, the incident opens up the case of an assumed suicide 15 years before that might supply the motive. One of
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Harbinder's team of detectives is also an alumna and present at the reunion. Was she involved in either case?

This is a nice transition to a new series and a new setting.
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LibraryThing member BrianEWilliams
A brilliant police procedural detective novel. It's got an excellent story: good plot (a whodunnit), interesting characters (mostly likeable people), an atmospheric setting (contemporary London), and it moves along at a good clip. DI Harbinder Kaur is a standout. You are cheering her on to do a
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good job on her first major assignment in her new job and she manages to pull it off. An excellent read.
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LibraryThing member Mercef
3 and a half stars. If “gentle” murders is your preferred genre, this fits the bill. This is the third in the D I Kaur series - probably could be read as a stand alone but it’s nice to see the lead character develop (Harbinder Kaur - a British/Indian lesbian policewoman). Throw in a little
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humour as well and you have an easy, satisfying read.
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Pages

352

ISBN

006328927X / 9780063289277
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