Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.
The death of a crusading journalist as part of a sexual misadventure than might be a concealed murder, a gunman injured when his 3-D printed firearm explodes and the theft of a laptop belonging to a local drug baron suggest trouble may be coming to the streets of Mexton.
Trouble with the potential to escalate into a full-scale turf war if DC Mel Cotton and her CID colleagues can’t untangle the links between seemingly unconnected events.
This latest thriller featuring DC Mel Cotton is, like its predecessors, a solid old school police procedural. All the elements are there, ruthless local crooks willing to go to any length to build or retain their empire, simmering tensions over justice not being done and suspicions of corruption in high places. In the hands of Brian Price, they work with the precision of a Swiss watch.
Not least because he brings to the familiar a decidedly twenty first century twist, like an illicit firearm being acquired through buying details of how to print one from the dark web. A spreadsheet holding the data on which hangs a drug ring worth millions of pounds also makes for a suitably modern McGuffin.
Cotton and the other cops are convincingly human in their reactions to the mix of extreme tension and mundane routine that characterize their work. When it comes the action is believably brutal and has consequences that follow the characters from one book to the next.
This is another enjoyable instalment in a series that reliably delivers the goods and deserves to be better known.
