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BONFIRE . . . between the covers

I promise to ration the use of metaphors based on fire and sparks, but you must allow me to say that there is an explosive start to this novel. New to the historic Sussex town of Lewes, DCI Holly Hennessy’s first major job is to head the team policing the town’s anarchic bonfire festival. It is held every November but its origins are slightly older than those of the Guy Fawkes festivities. In the reign of Queen ‘Bloody’ Mary, seventeen protestants were burned at the stake, and it was in their memory – and with a more general sense of anti Catholicism – that the ritual developed. Effigies of figures of authority are now regularly burned as part of the fun.

On this particular evening events take an horrific turn when a burning barrel is rolled down a hill, to crash against the base of the town war memorial. Inside the barrel is a human body, which turns out to be that of Lily Taylor, a university student who made a tidy income from her online skill as a gamer girl. Events become more complex for Hennessy when she realises that in the crowd watching the spectacle, and working on a documentary film, is Kyra Ford, an academic at The University of Sussex and someone she went to school with. They parted on extremely bad terms, and the exact reasons for that schism are revealed later. This revelation casts a very different light on Holly’s relationship with husband Ian and stepson Joe.

A quick heads up. This novel deals with subjects which some readers may find uncomfortable. We read of sexual exploitation of teenage girls and the famous eight words from the last line of Two Loves by Lord Alfred Douglas. Both are pivotal go the narrative, but if you are troubled by their inclusion then, as they used to say, “look away now”.

In Lewes there are different – and rival – Bonfire societies, one of which is The Pelham. We meet Natasha Ferdinand, vineyard owner and self-styled Wiccan. She was once a senior member of The Pelham Society but, like Kyra and Holly, they have fallen out in dramatic fashion. Coincidentally (or perhaps not) Lily’s stepfather Phil Dean is a member of The Pelham Society. Via one of her students, Kyra discovers that Lily’s gamer persona had a rather different side to it. She was also to be seen on the adult channel OnlyCams and may have even been groomed by her tutor Dr Ambrose Woolf.

CCTV footage emerges that shows a ceremonially masked man in a pub full of revellers. He meets Lily, appears to slip something into her drink and, when the drug takes effect a little while later, he ‘helps’ her from the pub. Woolf is brought in for questioning, but is not detained. The next day, he is found dead in his house. It is a grim scene that Holly sees.

“In the weak oyster light, she takes in his ashen, lifeless face. Pulling back the duvet to reveal the rest of his body, she sees the deep slit on his right wrist and the shallower slash on his left. He’s wearing nothing but a pair of soiled y-fronts and his body is marble white. The lean torso and stomach so hairless he looks almost polished.”

Iona Hepburn is an ICU doctor who has worked in Lewes, taught at Sussex University, and now lives in Brighton with her wife and daughter. She likens her medical career to that of police detectives in their shared sense of humanity and over-familiarity with death. Bonfire has an unusual subtext for a mainstream crime novel, but it works. There is drama a-plenty, human passion, and a wry take on modern values.The narrative is immersive and totally convincing. It is Iona Hepburn’s debut novel, and it will be published by Allison and Busby on 22nd October.

October 18, 2026 0

THE MURDER TREE . . . Between the covers

As with most novels in a well established series, there is an extensive back-story here, and it is one than readers new to the books will just have to pick up as they go along. The action is set in Scotland, but in a rather mysterious prologue which seems to have little bearing on subsequent events, we are in London, and it is just before Christmas. A respected cosmetic dentist (married) has taken his mistress out for what should have been a delightful festive meal. Instead, he shatters her by saying that the relationship is over. Tongues are beginning to wag at work, and he needs to sell the flat in which he had installed her in order to pay for his daughters’ school fees. She leaves the restaurant in tears, but then she collapses on a West End street. Has she been stabbed? Poisoned? I am not a huge fan of prologues – they were best left to Frankie Howerd – but it will be while before this enigma is resolved.

Then, in rural Scotland, a corpse is discovered. It is of a man, and he appears to have been disembowelled. Normally DCI Christine Caplan would be on the case, but she is away on a Scottish island, for her daughter Emma’s wedding to the son of a wealthy landed family.

Chapter three sees us somewhere else again, this time a care home on Caplan’s home turf, where stroke victim, eighty two year-old Bernie Williams, is being prepared for – of all things – his engagement party. His soon-to-be fiancée is fellow resident, widow Janet Steele. We also meet Dorothy ‘Doro’ Holland, Bernie’s principal carer. She has a six year-old son with some kind of ailment that can only be treated in America, and Dorothy has no money. Late that evening, Janet’s body is found dead in the garden, with no apparent suspicious marks or symptoms, but how did she circumvent the home’s rigorous security doors? We also learn that Bernie Williams is very wealthy.

Back to the wedding island, an idyllic day is somewhat despoiled when, as the sun sets, a body is gently washed ashore on the incoming tide – and the dead man has a devastating wound across his abdomen. Caplan is In charge of a Major Incident Team based in seaside town of Cronchie, but she gets wind of bad news: her team is going to be broken up and merged with a bigger unit, named Bowbelle, dedicated to fighting a rising drug crisis headed by a man known as The Wasp. One of his favoured transport methods is to case the product in condoms, which are ingested by the carrier. To put it bluntly, instead of waiting for nature to do its work, The Wasp’s lieutenants have recently resorted to a rather more brutal method of accessing their merchandise.

While Caplan has been away, her area seems to have had a spate of strange deaths. There was the disembowelled man, who may have been the victim of a longhorned cow being protective of her calf. There was poor Janet Steele, dead on the night of her engagement. And (where would crime writers be without joggers and dog walkers) who is the elderly man found dead, slumped at the base of a tree, near a forest jogging trail? As if there weren’t enough dead bodies, we also have the mysterious death of Juniper Greene, an elderly recluse, her corpse eventually discovered after some of it had been gnawed away by starving cats. Was she, as rogue journalist Carrie Cowie-Browne suggests, on a witness protection scheme? Caplan is surrounded by death, and struggling not to be submerged beneath its finality.

Just under half way through the novel, we learn the connection between the mysterious prologue and Caplan’s current caseload, and it lies in the identity of the dead dog walker who, as Caplan’s shrewd Sergeant points out, was wearing the wrong kind of shoes for such terrain. What a puzzle! In the end, Caro Ramsey throws all the pieces of the jigsaw up into the air and, when they have settled, reassembles them to create a picture that few readers could have visualised. Although The Murder Tree is much too grim and gritty to resemble anything from The Golden Age, it does share one characteristic of those mysteries, in that several key players are not who they claim to be. The novel is published by Severn House and is available now.

October 15, 2026 0

THE HARLOT OF ST CECELIA’S . . . Between the covers

England, 1923. Eden Brior is a librarian at a London institution called St Cecelia’s, and a long way from home, even though her native Boston was at that time perhaps, the most English of American cities. Through no fault of her own, she becomes involved in the investigation into a particularly horrid murder, that of a beautiful – but damaged – French actress. The dead woman is Isabelle Jalbert, someone whose physical beauty has caused those around her – both men and women – an exquisite blend of pain and joy.

Her current husband (although we learn that she is guilty of bigamy) is an American theatre producer called Alan Holloway, although we have already been told that Isabelle has considerable ‘history’ with an apparently feckless and reckless man called Simon Cross who lives with his sister Meg and her husband Arthur in a London suburb.

I have been fascinated by The Great War since I was a teenager, have walked countless miles across the former battlefields, and I am drawn instinctively to novels set in the 1920s and 1930s. At the forefront of my mind is always a variant of the question, “What did you do in the war, Daddy?” Simon Cross is certainly of an age to have served, as is Inspector Garrett. In fact, Simon Cross served in France as a Captain in the East Surreys, and was awarded the Military Cross but, as he tells Garrett, “After The Somme, they just gave them to anyone who was left.” Two days after The Armistice, Cross simply disappeared in Paris, was eventually found, court marshaled and dishonorably discharged. Garrett also did his bit, but with the London Irish in Palestine, and he has a leg disfigured by Turkish shells and bullets to prove it.

While Cross lives with his sister and her rather pompous husband, Garrett rents a room in a noisy and inhospitable house. The owner sells up, and our man has to seek accommodation elsewhere. Cross is the enigma. He is apparently louche, decadent, and idle, but Garrett discovers he secretly trains as a sprinter. We also discover that his post war Paris days were spent in the company of both Isabelle and a mysterious painter called Marc Etienne, now in the later stages of morphine addiction, a habit he shared with Isabelle.

At the root of the mystery, I suppose, is the question of money. Simon Cross appears to have no income, yet he lives the high life of gentlemen’s clubs and expensive taxis. The pompous Arthur Drake is a university lecturer, but he and Meg can afford a chauffeur and a maid. Isabelle was supposed to be on the verge of a family bequest, and Alan Holloway, like many theatre producers, is almost permanently broke.

Eden Brior flits in and out of the narrative. She is certainly not a conventional heroine. She seems dowdy and frequently flustered, although intelligent and observant. In the end, she identifies the killer of Isabelle at about the same time as Garrett, but for different reasons.

Darcy Graves (below) grew up in Boston and holds an MA in English history. She brings to her work a deep love of the Golden Age of detective fiction — particularly Agatha Christie and P.D. James — and the whimsy of P.G. Wodehouse.

There is, at the end of the Kindle version of the book, a set of readers’ discussion questions, presumably aimed at groups that like to talk about books and their interpretation. One of the questions is about the title. Ms Graves asks, “Who, or what, do you think the title ultimately points toward?“Good question. For all her faults, Isabelle Jalbert was only briefly acquainted with St Cecelia’s and, if we take the ‘H’ word to mean a prostitute, then Eden’s morals seem to be unblemished. Perhaps, then, it is a ‘what’, and there is some metaphor hidden here. Obviously, this book is a pastiche, but it is delightfully done, with a genuine sense of awareness for the brittle and uncertain times that followed The Great War. It is independently published, and available now.

October 5, 2026 0

COLD BLADE . . . Between the covers

We are in the streets – some decidedly mean but others rather splendid – of Minneapolis for this pacy thriller, the latest saga in the career of private investigator Nils Shapiro who works in an agency with two other PIs, Annika and Eglaand. Lukas Day, a junior hedge fund manager has been found in his apartment, butchered with a kitchen knife. The chief suspect is the woman who was recently in his bed, Paige Willett. Who just happens to be the wife of Day’s boss.

Jonathan Willett is a hugely successful hedge fund trader, and has made billions by being ruthless, uncompromising and determined to win at every single aspect of his life. Willett hires Shapiro to find out who killed Lukas Day. Shapiro soon finds that both Jonathan and Paige have what is euphemistically known as an open marriage and are fairly repulsive human beings, for different reasons, but being an old fashioned kind of man, he determines to get to the truth, unhindered by his negative feelings for his clients.

The initial alternative suspects are all friends and family; we have Reeves Fleetwood, Willett’s former business partner and now serious competitor; we have Willett’s first wife Cecilia, and their son Vincent, who has mental issues; the there’s Benjamin, Willett’s brother, tasked withe unenviable task of looking after their father, now in the grip of dementia; how about Brooke Stolle, Lukas Day’s actual girlfriend?

CriFi buffs will find Shapiro doesn’t depart too far from the well traveled and much loved template for an American PI. He is handsome, smart, a former police officer and, while he doesn’t wisecrack with other characters, he does share his trenchant observations with readers. He is both unlucky and unfortunate in love. He is divorced from his first wife, and his second – a senior Minneapolis police officer, died of wounds sustained in a shoot-out three years earlier.

Jonathan Willett has a mania for antiques and, in particular Chinese artifacts including ancient porcelain. The trio at the Stone Arch Investigations, now joined by a former British police officer Shanae, come up with a possible theory. For all Willett’s acquisitive energy, it seems like the main kick he gets from buying the antiques is the knowledge that if he has them, no-one else can. The actual grace, history and intrinsic beauty of the vases and and sculptures appears to escape him, and he is quite happy to have them stored away in a cellar. What if, then, Benjamin Willett – a talented potter – has been ‘borrowing’ vases from his brother’s house, making detailed copies of them, returning the copies to the house, but selling on the originals? Already in Shapiro’s sights is a mysterious warehouse on the edge of town, a place with intense 24/7 security, and apparently run by an elderly Chinese man known as Mr Tu (who is, as they say, ‘known’ to the FBI). In the end the killer of Lukas Day is unmasked, and all I will say is that the murderer’s identity is a surprise – but not a shock. This entertaining and immersive thriller is published by Severn House Crime and Thriller and is available now.

October 5, 2026 0

KILLING ON THE NORFOLK BROADS . . . Between the covers

I have come to enjoy Heather Peck’s Greg Geldard mysteries, and you can read reviews of earlier novels in the series by clicking this link. Yes, Geldard is just one of scores of fictional English coppers vying for our attention as CriFi readers, but the books are well written and the main characters are totally convincing. There is probably a PhD out there somewhere analysing fictional murder locations within the English counties but, quite unscientifically, I suggest that Norfolk would be high on the list. In addition to the Geldard series we have, in no particular order, the Peter Shaw novels of Jim Kelly, the Ruth Galloway mysteries by Elly Griffiths and the recently re-published DS David Smith storied by Peter Grainger.

For the avoidance of doubt, this book may have a rural setting but cosy crime it most certainly is not. Inquisitive old ladies, bumbling vicars and bucolic police constables are noticeable by their absence. Instead we have the skeleton of a woman discovered in an abandoned farmhouse. She is roped to a chair and has been dead for, perhaps, three years. Nearby is a cupboard full of sex toys and, in an adjacent bedroom, there are walk to wall mirrors. Geldard believes this is the stage setting for a snuff movie. His forensic advisors believe that the skull, found beside the chair, was severed while the victim was still alive.

The dead woman is eventually identified as that of a Ukranian film student who somehow found her way into the darker fringes of that particular art form. Diligent investigative work reveals a currently live victim of these perverted film-makers. She is located, and is found on a leaky semi-abandoned cabin cruiser hidden away on an isolated spur of one of the Norfolk Broads.

Here’s what may seem to be an odd analogy. I used to be an enthusiastic angler, and our fishing reels had a kind of clutch which, when playing a big fish, allowed a certain amount of line to be paid out, tiring the fish, but smoothly enough not to cause a line snap. So it is here. Geldard and his team have their quarry hooked, but reeling in their prey requires subtlety, patience and determination. With enquiries ranging from North London HMOs to villages in Ukraine ravaged by the Chernobyl disaster, the purveyors of this most despicable of entertainments are brought to justice.

One of the many joys of this book is that Heather Peck avoids narrative tricks which, in my opinion, disfigure too many modern crime novels. There are no flashbacks, no flash-forwards, and none of the ‘six weeks earlier’ chapters which I have come to know and hate. What we have here is terrific storytelling, intelligent writing, and a thoroughly immersive read. I was particularly delighted that the rather happy ending was graced by someone singing The Parting Glass, an evocative old Scottish song which, in younger days, I sang many times. Killing On The Norfolk Broads will be published by Joffe Books on 22nd September.

September 21, 2026 0

SECRETS ON THE FELLS . . . Between the covers

Whatever sights the silent stones of Fountains Abbey had witnessed over the centuries from its creation by the Normans to its ruination by Henry VIII, a butchered corpse was probably not among their number. But when Yorkshire cops Di Leo Donovan and DC Shan Young are called out to the stately ruins one bitter winter night, that is just what they find. Patrick Armitage, college lecturer, his body ravaged by knife wounds, his lips frozen in the rictus of death, had been on site earlier, directing the dress rehearsal of a musical.

Now, with all the actors, singers and technicians long gone, he lies dead, with the arterial spray from his wounds staining one of the ancient pillars of the nave. Donovan and Young are an interesting pair. Donovan, much Young’s senior, is beginning to feel the onset of arthritis, but has other pains, the principle one being that of the shattered relationship with Luke, his son, who is doing prison time for a hate crime, brought to light by his father’s diligence. Young is of Chinese heritage with adoptive parents, and is in a same sex relationship. She and her partner have one failed IVF pregnancy behind them, but they hope for better things.

As is often the way with police procedurals, early suspects seem to be eliminated for one reason or another, and the investigation stalls. Donovan likens the process to one of those fairground grab machines where the prize seems almost in reach before the claws slip and close on thin air. In murder fiction, families are rarely what they seem to be, and so it is here. Armitage’s brother Max is a drunk, obsessed with pursuing an ever-more-elusive fortune by dabbling in crypto currency. And is Bree, Armitage’s wife, the distraught widow she seems to be?

The investigation takes a dramatic turn when a teenage girl, Rosie, one of the stars of the now abandoned musical goes missing. Donovan and Young have discovered that some years earlier, Armitage had been involved, apparently innocently, with a female student, Janelle, who had developed a huge crush on him. Is the disappearance of Rosie history repeating itself? Did the charismatic – and handsome – college lecturer somehow fall foul of yet another teenage obsession?

In some ways, this novel is nothing out of the ordinary in the genre, in that the procedural details are convincing, and the main characters are well drawn. For me, however, the stand-out quality is the vibrancy of the setting; the towering and gaunt majesty of the ruined abbey, the sharp frosts making the tall grasses sparkle on the wintry lanes, and the sheer endurance of the local limestone in the old farms and field walls. Against this backdrop, Cath Staincliffe has written a crime novel which involves readers from the very first paragraph and keeps us guessing until the very end.

I don’t use the star system on my site for the reason that it is too blunt a tool, and I prefer to convey my views with more nuance. Commercial sites like Amazon, Netgalley and Goodreads do have the star system, and I generally play safe and award three or four. Here, though, I will be going for five. In addition to the wonderful topographical background, Cath Staincliffe mines deep into human joy and sorrow. Donovan’s heartbreak at the total breakdown of his the relationship with his son, Young’s paralysing anxiety over her own identity and the health of her adoptive father, and the devastating effects of violent crime on families – each is described unflinchingly, but with a huge sense of compassion. Secrets On The Fells is published by Joffe Books and available now.

September 17, 2026 0

FAREWELL TO EDEN . . . Between the covers

Historical fiction is particularly powerful when it reminds the reader of particular experiences within his or her lifetime. Faulks starts this book with a train journey through England. It is 1951, and Philip Deval is in a carriage sauntering through the English countryside towards Witchelm, home to the rural private school for girls where he has been appointed teacher of French. Yes, I remember those tobacco smoke impregnated fabric seats and the carriage doors which you could only open by pulling down the window with a leather strap.and reaching outside to turn the door handle.

The narrative switches between the months leading up to the war, Deval’s time in the army, and post-war England. There is a breathtaking section quite early in the book which relates Deval’s first experience of Palestine. He is part of the British peace-keeping force whose mandate (a potent word) is to be equally amicable to the indigenous Arab population and the more peaceable Jewish settlers. The main physical threat comes from violent Jewish Nationalist groups like Irgun, who see British troops as a target both vulnerable and legitimate.

On a sight-seeing drive with the company’s padre. Deval sees places forever imprinted on his consciousness after years of biblical education at home. Like Deval, I am a lukewarm Christian, but years of Sunday School have given names like Nazareth, Cana and Galilee an almost mystical sonority which barely makes itself heard above the violent screeching of modern hatred and warfare. One of the standout quotes from this book is uttered by a weary British army officer called Knox, talking to Deval:

“And it all seemed so pleasant here in Galilee.”
“It still is. A promised land.’
Knox turned to look out of the window.
“I just wish it hadn’t been promised to quite so many people.”

I am sure that no contemporary writer relishes being compared to great writers of the past, but as reviewers, we must say what we think. There are shades of Evelyn Waugh in this novel. Both Witchelm and Llanabba Castle in Decline and Fall are struggling private schools, even though the staff of Witchelm does not contain anyone as grotesque as Captain Grimes. Although Guy Crouchback in the Sword of Honour trilogy is older than Philip Deval, they have a similar ambivalence about army life; both men cherishing the comradeship and sense of belonging, while sharing a distaste for the dark things that men in uniform often have to do.

In no sense is this a political novel, but Faulks has certainly done his research. He pinpoints the fact that in the post war years, Britain was something of an international orphan. America viewed us as a temperamental former ally who owed them billions of dollars: to Russia we were an insignificant military threat despite our nuclear expertise: most inexplicably, France viewed us with a sense of betrayal, despite the torrents of British blood shed on their soil during the war years. And in the Middle East? Once again, we were the hated intermediary, loathed equally by Jewish terror gangs, innocent settlers and Arab nationalists. Here, in an incident worthy of Milo Minderbinder in Catch 22 (remember when he took out a subcontract from the Germans to bomb US bases because of mutual profit margins?) the Arabs raid a British arms depot, seizing thousands of rifles, Sten guns and hand grenades – which they then sell to Irgun, the Jewish terror group who, as we later learn, have long memories and an even longer reach.

Lurking beneath the poignant portrayal of a Britain trying to understand why, if it had won the war, daily life was such a miserable struggle, and the nostalgic social reminiscences (forget Proust and his Madeleines) such as tinned peaches and evaporated milk, lies something much darker, and it involves two crimes. Having lured us into a world of regret, fond memories and a country that ‘kept calm and carried on’. Faulks springs his trap relatively late in the book, and it is astonishingly effective – a literary punch in the midriff. Farewell to Eden is profound, compassionate, historically assured – but with a killer twist. I become more emotional as the years take their toll, but I admit to becoming moist eyed by the sense of redemption in the final pages. Larkin’s immortal seven words ‘what will survive of us is love’ were never more appropriate. The book will be published by Hutchinson Heinemann on 17th September.

September 16, 2026 0

ONE BERLIN DAY . . . Between the covers

Chris Humphreys introduced us to his hitman anti-hero Mr Phipps in One London Day, which I reviewed earlier this year. In that story, the murderous Phipps was hired by The Shadows, a rogue group of financiers who were subverting justice and posing a threat to the national good. His mission was to kill their accountant. This he did, but not without causing collateral damage, one instance of which was brutally beating Stanley, a young London football thug. That act will come back to haunt him in this novel, where he is hired in joint enterprise by MI5 and MI6 to take out a target in Germany.

The target is Olsen, a former STASI officer who is now running a people smuggling operation using refrigerated lorries. MI6 want him dead, but MI5 and one of their top women, known as Ellerby, would rather go down the legal route using arrest and formal trial. Cleverly, perhaps to distract us from the moral shortcomings of Mr Phipps, Humphreys creates a genuine monster in Berndt Olsen. His titular father was an SS officer, but his blood father was a Red Army rapist. The acne that rendered him monstrous as a youngster has been tamed by the use of Royal Jelly from his beehives, but his mental scars are open and unhealed. He selects young girls from his potential passengers, and uses them terribly.

Humphreys sets the Berlin scene beautifully. The major players are all there, but we are yet to see how their worlds will collide. Phipps, posing as a football fan in town for an international match; Ellerby, dining with an old cop friend, hoping that she can persuade the BND (the German foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst) to cooperate; Olsen, moving smoothly through the world of privacy and security his wealth has bought; Sadiq Khan, the only member of The Shadows to evade justice, being wined and dined by Olsen in an exclusive gentlemen’s gated complex; Stanley, ostensibly in town to watch a football match, but more interested in smuggling a huge payload of class A pharmaceuticals back to England. There is another person of interest – Wolfgang, Olsen’s formidable neo-Nazi chauffeur and bodyguard.

We are given something of an explanation into why Phipps is a borderline psychopath, and it is because of his harrowing time as a soldier in Afghanistan. Humphreys reminds us, not that it was strictly necessary, that Afghanistan is a bestial, bigoted and benighted hell-on-earth, and that people from The West have, for centuries, been fooling themselves that they can change the place, from the disastrous forays of the mid 19th century to the equally catastrophic interventions of more recent times.

When Ellerby receives the bum’s rush from her contact at the BND, she is left with with no option but to pull the metaphorical trigger on Olsen, by sending a text to Phipps which will set him loose to eliminate Olsen. I’m struggling to find the best metaphor for how the novel plays out, but it involves vehicles, be they trains or cars, converging on – not a crossroads, because that implies just four ways – a point of collision. Do the good guys win? Yes, of course, but in unexpected ways, Olsen’s end being particularly painful and inventive.

The author betrays some political bias during the narrative. He clearly thinks that the AfD is bad for both Germany and Europe. I might disagree with his stance, but this doesn’t dilute my admiration for a brilliant political thriller, which blends traditional Noir with the genre of the flawed-but-reluctantly-sympathetic hired killer. One Berlin Day will be published by Allison & Busby on 17th September.

September 14, 2026 0

THE INFORMER . . . Between the covers

Authors, often unwittingly, can be prescient in what they write. Urban riots in Britain are, thankfully infrequent but, as I write this review, the headlines about the disturbances in Middlesborough following the death of two police officers are beginning to recede. Here, in Hafton, a fictional northern city which could well be Hull, DCI John Blizzard is wiping the grit from his eyes after several nights directing the police response to violent disorder on a sink estate euphemistically christened The Willows, but commonly known as The Spur.

On The Spur there are neither Willows, Meadows, Brooks, Glades nor any other of the other fatuously improbable terms used by town planners to name cheap housing estates. Instead, The Spur is home to broken families, feral youths and a violent hatred of any kind of authority. I am old and very grey, if not full of sleep, and the horrors of the digital age never fail to appall me, and here Blizzard encounters an abomination known as Grief Tech.

AI enables dead loved ones to be recreated, revoiced, and their lives re-enacted on video. John Dean is writing fiction, of course, but can it be that something so awful is now ‘a thing’? The mother of a police officer, Kenny Jarvis, slain on The Spur years earlier, is sucked into such a scheme, known as Second Chance, and tries to convince Blizzard that her dead son, via his AI reincarnation, has vital clues to the identity of the man dubbed ‘The Orchestrator’, believed to be planning and directing the violence on The Spur. Blizzard is a bluff and uncompromising old fashioned copper who is unashamedly baffled by the acceleration of technology in law enforcement, but when his more enlightened colleagues expose Second Chance as a multi-million bitcoin money laundering agency, he is delighted at their work, but still unsure of how this is connected to the appalling violence emanating from The Spur.

He is equally baffled by what connects the ancient parish church of St Andrew’s to the unrest, and cannot see that its almost complete destruction by arson is linked to the lowlife criminals who are on the rampage night after night. And why are the earnest evangelical Christians from the Love Foundation connected to the mayhem? I always try to avoid spoilers, so suffice it say that someone who appears to be ‘holier than thou’ is at the centre of the villainy.

Also, it is reassuring to meet a senior copper like Blizzard who is not always the best judge of character. This is not a criticism of the novel which was, in turn, gripping, entertaining and fast-paced, but I do wonder why crime writers bother to invent fictional cities. I feel much more at home reading a novel if I know it is set in Leeds, Oxford, Cambridge, Peterborough, Manchester, London, or Bristol. I can understand it when writers create fictional villages; real villages have relatively tiny populations and easily identified buildings, but large urban conurbations? As ever, I am happy to hear your views. There is a contact form on the website, but my immediate email is dprestidge@yahoo.com The Informer is published by Joffe Books and is available now.