A body is found bricked into the walls of a house. From the state of the hands, it’s clear the dead man was buried alive. Soon, the victim is linked to an old missing person’s case and DS Adam Tyler is called.
WILL IGNITE
As the sole representative of South Yorkshire's Cold Case Review Unit, Tyler recognises his role for what it is – a means of keeping him out of the way following an ‘incident’. When this case falls in his lap, he grabs the opportunity to fix his stagnating career.
THE CITY
And then Tyler discovers he has a connection to the case that hopelessly compromises him. He makes the snap decision not to tell his superiors, certain that he and only he can solve the crime. But now Tyler must move carefully to find out the truth, without destroying the case or himself.
Meanwhile, someone in the city knows exactly what happened to the body. Someone who is watching Adam closely. Someone with an unhealthy affinity with fire. . .
I'd like to thank Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for inviting me to be a part of this blog tour and Jess at Simon & Schuster UK for my proof copy of Firewatching to review.
Firewatching is the debut novel from Russ Thomas and having finished reading it last night I can confirm that it has all the hallmarks that I enjoy from a crime novel, a sense of place, carefully constructed plot as well as characters that you'll either love or hate.
Our central character DS Adam Tyler was a complex individual and it's only over time that we start to see what makes him tick and learn more about his family history as well as discover the background to the incident that led to him being sidelined to being the sole member of the Cold Case team. And we soon discover that there could be a conflict of interest with the case when his personal and professional lives become entwined.
Within the policing team there was a diverse mix of characters and it was interesting to see how well they could all work together considering their fairly obvious differences. DI Jim Doggett was very much a traditional grassroots copper who had been involved with the original high-profile missing person case for Gerald Cartwright. Adam himself seemed to be very much of a lone-wolf character who didn't seem to fit in well with the team but then considering how he'd been treated in the past it's understandable that he might want to go it alone. And then there's ambitious WPC Amina Rabbani who wants the opportunity to prove herself worthy of a place working in CID alongside the detectives.
As for the case itself, the more they investigated the more questions that were running round my head. The victim Gerald certainly wasn't innocent by any means but despite what dubious and heinous crimes he might have been involved with, he didn't deserve to die in such a horrific manner. And then there's the eccentric elderly neighbours Edna and Lily, what is their relationship to one another and what is their side story all about?
One of the things that confused me initially were what had the blog posts at the beginning of each section, written by someone called The Firewatcher, to do with the overall story. Initially they seemed harmless enough, random posts about fire and events of the past, but gradually they became more and more creepy and it's only over time that you realise how they play their part.
Once I settled into the writing style of the author, I became immersed in the story and how the various threads all came together. Overall Firewatching is an impressive debut and I was pleased to discover that this is the first of a planned police procedural series so hopefully it won't be too long before we are reacquainted with Adam and Amina who is a character I would love to see developed further.
Thanks for the blog tour support Sharon x
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