In Perth, Western Australia a young woman has been killed: her body shaved, spray-painted bronze and posed provocatively with the words easeful death written on her leg. Stevie Hooper, a new member of the city’s Serious Crime Squad, plays a pivotal role in the investigation. When Stevie’s old friend and current boss Monty McGuire goes out on a limb to secure the services of a noted profiler to help with the case, Stevie acts as the team’s liaison in addition to her other duties.

On one level this is a fairly standard police procedural featuring a team of investigators with varying degrees of skill and integrity. Young introduces them all really cleverly in the first chapter just as the case is getting underway and because of this I found it easy to accept them all as realistic people rather than the extreme caricatures that sometimes populate these types of teams. Although Stevie and Monty do take centre stage the addition of a profiler, the wannabe-cop son of the Superintendent, a few ex-spouses and other members of the squad in the mix there’s much more of an ensemble cast than I’ve read in a while. I didn’t like them all equally but I enjoyed the credibility they offered the story.

There’s quite a complex plot but it’s artfully layed out. There are several threads that may, or may not, intertwine with the present case and elements of the investigators’ personal lives play into events too but Young juggles it all expertly. More than one person has secrets which make them, at least for a time, believable in the role of killer. I was smugly sure of my own deductive powers and even though it turns out I had it all wrong the fact that I could just as easily have been right makes this classic whodunnit material.

Something I enjoyed about this book may not even have been a deliberate intention of the author’s but I liked the way it demonstrated the issue of police expecting members of the public to be entirely compliant with their investigative methods, regardless of how invasive or ill-aimed they might be, but react badly when those same methods are used on fellow officers. It’s not the first time I’ve been struck by this dichotomy but it’s a subject that I always think could benefit from another airing and it was good to be reminded of it so cleverly.

On top of delivering a genuinely suspenseful ending Young has captured the desperation of an investigative team having too little evidence and too much pressure exceptionally well in the lead-up to that resolution. I look forward to reading the next in this series and as it was published last year I can do so when it suits me.

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Opening Sentence: "... I sit in the unmarked, waiting for case file number 001005 to step out into the gloomy street ..."

Detective Sergeant Stevie Hooper is a young, focussed, single mum trying to make it in a rough world. But she is doing a great job moving through the ranks, and has just commenced in the Serious Crime Squad, and thrown into a bizzare case. The body of a woman is found in the CBD of Perth posed naked on a bench sprayed in a bronze paint. Written on her thigh in black are the words “An easeful death.”

The investigation commences swiftly, aware that time is of the essence in a case like this. A profiling expert is called in as there is a possible link to a series of prostitute killings a few years earlier. When a second woman is found - painted in silver - posed in a furniture store and closely connected to one of the investigation team, the team know they are after a serial killer. now they just have to work out who it is before someone becomes the gold trophy!

The suspect list grows ranging from an albino cleaner to the Superintendent, each suspect is plausible, red herrings abound and I changed my mind half a dozen times until I finally settled on one - the wrong one!! Each suspect has a reason they could do it, and enough mystery surrounding them to not discount them. When all is revealed at the high charged edge of the seat conclusion - it is it is perfectly believable.

Felicity Young was born in Germany in a British Army hospital and now lives in Australia. She has written three crime books. The team dynamics within the Serious Crime Squad is very well portrayed. There are differences and squabbles, but when push comes to shove they work together and protect each others backs. The book is a great read with everything from police corruption, betrayal, desires and obligations to work, family and friends. ( )

DS Stevie Hooper, recently seconded to the Serious Crime Squad in Perth, is working with her old friend DI Monty McGuire. When the naked, hairless body of a young woman is found, poised carefully outside a Bank in the main part of the city, sprayed totally with bronze paint there not only does not seem to be any reason for the murder, there are also no clues on the surveillance cameras because the murderer seems to have known enough to cover them, firstly when the body was placed there, and secondly when the props used to keep her in the bizarre pose as rigor-mortis set in are removed. The woman's face is an expressionless mask, and the words Easeful Death are printed down the length of her right thigh in black marker pen.

Is this killing connected with the last serial killer in Perth – the Kings Park killer? A suspect for those murders was never really confirmed as he died in a car crash before the police completed their investigations. McGuire's predecessor as head of SCS was forced out of the police under a cloud of suspicion over that investigation and Monty now can't decide if their recent killer is new or if the faulty investigation didn't even id the right suspect.

Stevie is dealing with problems of her own, a full-on, very intense investigation; the difficulties of juggling single motherhood and the time required on a job like this; a threatening and menacing ex-partner; and disturbing feelings for the interstate Profiler called in to help the SCS team.

Then a second victim is found, and the team discover that the paint was purchased in bronze, silver and gold. Can the SCS team stop these murders before there are two more victims?

AN EASEFUL DEATH includes a hefty concentration on Stevie Hooper, her problems with balancing her home life and her job, the difficulties with her ex-partner and her feelings for the enigmatic profiler called into the investigation. In the book blurb she's referred to as young and hard-edged – but to be honest, to this reader there was very little indication of any hard-edges. There's a back story with the ex-partner that is obviously intended to give her character some adversity that she is dealing with, and as a result of that she's got a tendency to be a little bit prickly with fellow team members. There's also a fairly standard romance element.

The plot lines are competently delivered, but predictable. There's some personal elements in Stevie's life that were bordering on the unbelievable and possibly these affected perceptions of the book. Whilst AN EASEFUL DEATH didn't really appeal to this reader, it undoubtedly will find an eager audience in readers who are looking for something on the romantic, less confrontational side of crime fiction. ( )

Somebody is killing young women in Perth, Western Australia, and then, post-mortem, posing their painted bodies carefully in relatively public places. The first body is painted bronze, the second silver ... you get the picture. False clues are left stuck to the bodies, and each has AN EASEFUL DEATH written down one leg. This is the second novel by Felicity Young. It features D.S. Stevie Hooper newly seconded to the Serious Crime Squad in Perth. She is young, un-married with a young daughter, keen to do well, and working with a boss who is also a good friend. In this case Stevie is the liaison with the eminent profiler who is helping the squad with the case. Quotes from publications by the profiler appear as tag lines in each of the chapters (but I must confess, didn't always seem significant to me). The action of the book mainly seems to happen over a one week period and comes thick and fast. There are plenty of candidates offered for the serial killer and I must confess I punted for the wrong one! Felicity says her third book, HARUM SCARUM, also featuring Stevie Hooper, will be published in March 2008 ( )