Rating: WORTHY!
This is a prequel to the successful British TV series of the same name (Luther). It begins on about the same level as the TV show, but becomes darker and darker as the reader ventures further into the plot. The novel ends with the events depicted at the beginning of the TV show, and it certainly makes it quite clear why Luther acted as he did.
Luther is what people would call a dirty cop, but in his case, what he does isn't for self-gain (except occasionally to get him out of scrapes that his more altruistic behavior has got him into in the first place). For example, one of his altruistic moves is to side with an elderly and frail man who is being bullied - and brutally so on one occasion - into quitting his home so a financially distressed and morally-challenged developer can build on the land. The man won't move, so the heavies are sent in and in response to this, Luther torches the developer's venerable Jaguar car. Unfortunately there are witnesses who describe a man very like Luther at the scene (Luther stands out in a crowd!), so this necessitates the DCI having to take some other measures outside the law, to avoid being nailed for the crime.
The big thrust here though, other than to, obviously, prequel the events in the excellent first season of the TV show (which it does very well), is to tell yet another sorry and violent story about a sick villain who, due to childhood trauma, is now visiting that trauma on children himself. His overwhelming passion is to have a child of his own. Somehow he senses that he would never be considered suitable were he to apply for an adopted child. His own lack success in impregnating two prostitutes that he kidnapped and held prisoner (and subsequently murdered and fed to his dogs), and his lack of faith in the "quality" of some random child he might buy from European sources has forced him into stalking couples and selecting a "healthy breeding pair" from whom to kidnap a newborn. His first attempt goes bad and so he tries a second time with an older girl, whom he plans to raise to maturity and then impregnate himself.
The job, then, for Luther, in addition to dealing unsuccessfully with his failing marriage, and warding-off serious questions about his behavior and tactics from within his own police organization, is to find this girl before things can deteriorate even more than they have already. The book is tense, very dark in many places, brutal in others, and hard to read at times, but it stays true to Luther and to the TV show. One of the highlights for me, of the show, was Alice Morgan, but she is necessarily absent here because Luther has not met her yet. I understand this, but still missed her. She was such a high-spot for me in the show. But I can't hold the book responsible for that!
One of the annoying things about the whole Luther world is the rumors which surround it: that there will be a movie (not so far!), that the third series was the last (it wasn't!), that there will be an Alice Morgan spin-off (not yet!), that the novel is the first of a trilogy (again, not yet!). It's hard to gage where this will go next and I wish people would quit saying where it's going until it's set in stone. That aside I recommend both this novel and the show, viewed in that order.
