Thank you to the author, publishers Hodder and Stoughton and NetGalley UK for access to this as an advance reader’s ebook. This is an honest and voluntary review.

 

DI Birch is desperate to get back to work. Recovering from a gunshot wound in the line of duty, she’s been ordered to rest and enter therapy. But when her protégé tells her about a pattern she’s spotted between recent reports, Birch throws herself into an unofficial investigation.

 

This is book five in the DI Birch series, but it absolutely passes the great series test by balancing relevant backstory with plot in a way that doesn’t labour the point while welcoming new readers who arrive mid-series.

 

Birch is a great character. In many ways the archetypal trope detective of the social misfit whose inability to play the organisational politics game is tolerated because she reaches insights into the case all her colleagues miss. But, she manages to feel fresh in a way that isn’t simply ’oh, but this one’s female’. 

 

The supporting cast are also largely strong, apart from Birch’s boss and the rival who has taken over her position while she is on leave. Both fall dangerously close to caricatures in their rope pf provide opposition and challenge to Birch’s insightful, but renegade detective.

 

Newly-minted Detective Sergeant Amy Kato, Birch’s father Jamieson and her boyfriend Anjan are, however, all well-developed character who both challenge and facilitate Birch in an interesting and largely believable way.

 

A really good standalone story and a new author added to my TBR list to catch-up with their back catalogue.