Firewatching

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They soon discover that the body was bricked up behind a basement wall while still alive – some six months before the fire that damaged the dwelling. He has several oh-so-typical traits for the genre, such as an apparent inability to make friends, a flagrant disregard for those above him, and a chequered past in which he assaulted a superior officer, but this is coupled with his being identified as openly gay more-or-less from the start of the narrative, something you don’t get to see much of in crime fiction. Questioning of the neighbors reveals two older ladies who used to help take care of Oscar: Ex-schoolteacher Edna is dying of cancer and Lily is suffering from a dementia-like illness. A terrible fidget, his constant jiggling makes you want to hold his limbs down but I love his wit, black humour, his intelligence and he proves to be a very unlikely supporter of Adam. He’s flawed and although that’s common with this genre what isn’t is the fact he’s gay and this really shone a light on the homophobia that is rife in the police force often disguised as banter.

Lead character DS Adam Tyler works on the Cold Case Review Team for South Yorkshire police, well to be fair he is the review team.With a pyromaniac on the loose - taunting the authorities with cryptic and wildly popular blog posts, Lily - a little old lady with a secret she can’t remember, and a police constable with a lot to prove in her first plain-clothes job, will DS Tyler find the murderer or the arsonist? When a body is found behind a cellar wall in the Old Vicarage in a sleepy area of Sheffield, an intricate web of secrets, lies and cruelty is slowly uncovered. The characterisation is excellent and though Adam has a cool exterior as a defence at what life has chucked at him but I think he is very likeable. His successes in solving cases have made him a lot of enemies, he has to endure sly pointed comments about his father, and homophobia in the form of 'banter' and otherwise.

A taut investigative thriller bursting with character and tension, introducing an enigmatic, fresh lead detective unlike any you have met before. The story isn't pretty, quite painful to read about the disturbing scenes that occurred in the past. Rather than this making him an unlikable or unappealing character, however, Russ Thomas finessed all these things into a man I now want to know much more about. Thomas pulls the reader in and creates empathy for his protagonist by laying bare the bigotry that Tyler faces regularly.

The case is led by DI Jim Doggett, who beneath his bluster is keen to have Adam on the team, and lets him bring on board the ambitious Constable Rabbani, providing he accepts responsibility for her. The multiple threads eventually begin to connect, there is plenty of intrigue and it looks as if Adam might have been played, but by whom?