CRIME FICTION
GEOFFREY WANSELL
STREETS OF DARKNESS by A.A.Dhand (Bantam £12.99)
set in Bradford, Yorkshire, this up-to-the-minute debut is a scorching story of a city divided between the far-Right British National Party and the asian community.
Born, raised and still living in Bradford, Dhand paints a portrait of a world miles from the comfortable english crime novel.
Here we have a murdered asian leader, a Right-wing convict whom someone may be trying to frame for the killing and a suspended asian police officer, Detective Inspector Harry Virdee, a sikh who has married outside his faith to a devout Muslim, saima.
set against the backdrop of the Muslim festival of eid, it sees Virdee doing all he can to clear his name and root out the canker of corruption in the force he belongs to, while trying to head off what could turn into a riot. Written with pace and precision, it gives us a character destined for television — it is no surprise the rights have been snapped up — but also announces the arrival of a formidable crime writer.
BURNED AND BROKEN by Mark Hardie (Sphere £16.99)
TOLD in a series of flashbacks, this auspicious debut opens with a charismatic Detective Inspector, who is under investigation, found burned alive in his car on the southend seafront.
Meanwhile, a vulnerable teenager freshly out of a local care home is intent on trying to discover what happened to one of her best friends who has disappeared, and may have been killed.
the engaging Ds Frank Pearson and DC Catherine Russell from the essex Major Incident team are drafted in to solve the mystery of why their senior colleague has died in such horrifying circumstances and, in doing so, stumble across a series of connections that bring their force under suspicion.
the novel is all the more remarkable for the fact its author turned to writing full-time only when he lost his eyesight 14 years ago. But there is no trace of that in the storytelling, dialogue or descriptive power of this finely drawn, overlapping story.
TRAIL OF ECHOES by Rachel Howzell Hall (Titan £7.99)
THE third novel based on black Detective elouise ‘Lou’ Norton and set in La, this confirms the crime series as one of the bestcrafted in recent years. Hall’s feeling for the pain female detectives can suffer seeps from every line of her stories, as does her sympathy for the dispossessed inhabitants of the City of angels.
Here, Norton is called to investigate the killing of 13-year- old Chanita Lords, who grew up in the same down-at-heel slum projects as she did.
the detective quickly discovers that other talented but equally disadvantaged teenagers have also gone missing, and then she starts receiving taunting messages from the killer.
Hall deserves to be compared to Kathy Reichs or Patricia Cornwell, and it will not be long before she is recognised as every bit as big a crime writing star.