AMBUSH

An ex-cop gets entangled in a sociopath’s plan for revenge.

After getting swept up in Operation Ambush, British drug lord Brian Tasker vowed payback against the six detectives who nailed him, blaming them for his decision to kill his girlfriend and infant son as a means of staging his escape. Now only Craig Alford and Jerry Tope are still on the job. Lincoln Bartlett died of cancer. Dave Carver is in a nursing home, his mind lost to dementia. Jimmy Blue retired to a farm. And Steve Flynn takes tourists around Ibiza in a sportfisher named after the lovely Maria Santiago, a Spanish police lieutenant he met a year or two back while chasing a gang of Albanian thugs around Gran Canaria (Onslaught, 2016, etc.). But when Alford is murdered, along with his wife and daughters, inside the family’s home, Detective Superintendent Rik Dean wants all hands on deck. And when Tope’s body is found in the river carrying a picture of the Ambush team, Dean decides that Tasker is finally making good his threat. But how can Tasker be picking off the detectives one by one when he died three months ago in a fire at Lancashire Prison? An increasingly desperate Dean reaches out to Flynn, who responds with his own brand of take-no-prisoners sleuthing.

Readers who like their detectives only slightly less deranged than the killers they hunt will be tickled to see Flynn back for an encore. Those who prefer a lower body count may want to steer clear.