THE FORCE by Don Winslow, HarperCollins.

They’re cops, only not as you know them. Yes they’re putting their lives between the gangs and the law-abiding sods who share the Manhattan North neighbourhood. But it’s not that simple. Cranked on speed, on the take and worse, the line between these good guys and baddies is all but disappearing. This is the cop novel writ large, sprayed on a stairwell wall. Denny Malone is old school, 18 years in the business. He’s “taken more real bad guys off the street than cancer”, streets where “Lady Justice has a blindfold over her eyes because she just can’t bear to watch what happens”. But he’s about to find out corruption goes beyond his unit and he could be its next victim. Don Winslow is the Martin Scorsese of crime literature and this is his tour de force.