WILDFIRE

DCI Henry Christie’s best attempts at retirement come to naught.

Custody sergeant Bill Heaton is pretty well satisfied that Thomas Costain is the man who kicked Damian Medway to death on a quiet Lancaster street. And soon after the local constabulary puts Tommy under 72-hour arrest, Brendan O’Hara and Cillian Roche, a pair of killers hired by his gang-lord grandfather, Conrad Costain, break into the jail, kill Heaton, free Tommy from his cell, and run off. Detective Superintendent Rik Dean, his forces stretched to their limit by a fire that’s claimed the lives of Andrea Greatrix and the child she held on her lap, wants Henry (Bad Cops, 2018, etc.) to help out DC Diane Daniels, of the Force Major Investigative Team—or, actually, to let Diane, who worked with Henry long ago and still admires him, to help him as he tries to make sense of this outbreak of violence. Henry, who’s already been targeted by O’Hara and Roche for personal revenge ever since he asked them to stop vaping at The Tawny Owl, the pub he runs, holds out for the outrageous sum of 1,000 pounds a day. Once he gets it, he throws himself as wholeheartedly into the case as if he were 30 years younger. And a good thing too, for the killings, which have continued apace with the beheading of Isobel York and the dismembering of her husband, John, show no sign of abating. It’s clear that the crime family run by the patriarch Conrad Costain is behind most of the mayhem, but a forgotten figure from Henry’s past turns up to claim a share of the credit.

Stouthearted police battle better-armed criminals to an outcome as implausible as it is inevitable.