It is a well-worn route to go down, to have corrupt police against the person both they and others are wronging. The book has a blurb quote mentioning its freshness, and it has won a stack of awards, which did surprise me a little, however much I want to attest to its qualities. Our hero can buy a replacement mobile and put contact numbers into it fresh without asking – I've lived with someone for three years and I have no idea what their mobile number looks like! But I did find a few things on the implausible side, in minor niggly ways.

There are a couple of further beats I found a little too predictable, but not to the extent they disturbed my pleasure. I did wonder at first how Caleb can charge someone with knowing the Mister Big that could have been behind this all, when the same could have been levelled at him, but I soon fell further into the depths of the corruption and machinations of the case. Luckily to say, however, the quality is still here.

It doesn't read like the usual Pushkin Vertigo title, and hasn't been presented as one, either – gone is the novella-length pocket book styling for something more like an airport purchase. The case will cause him to go a lot further than he would ever want – which includes to the door of his errant brother, and into the home of his recently-made-ex wife… The first signs that this murder is connected to the case are impossible to ignore – as indeed are hints that something really serious is going on, when Caleb finds he can't even trust the police looking into the murder. Caleb won't have heard it coming, however – he's pretty much deaf, getting a cadence of speech and noise from hearing aids but needing to lipread or sign.

The two – and a female police officer – were working as a private investigative group, tracking security flaws that led to a hugely costly warehouse robbery, and all have training in the industry, so they should have seen anything coming. Summary: A distinctive thriller with a great readability, that has a hero you will want more of in future books of the series.Ĭaleb Zelic has just found his colleague and lifelong friend murdered.

Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic