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Summary
Summary
"A pitch-perfect blend of the best of the old and the best of the new--all the traditional strengths and charms are here, with a fresh and relevant twenty first-century edge. I loved it."--Lee Child
A taut and ambitious police procedural debut introducing Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler, a cold case reviewer who lands a high-profile murder investigation, only to find the main suspect is his recent one-night stand . . .
When financier Gerald Cartwright disappeared from his home six years ago, it was assumed he'd gone on the run from his creditors. But then a skeleton is found bricked up in the cellar of Cartwright's burned-out mansion, and it becomes clear Gerald never left alive.
As the sole representative of South Yorkshire's Cold Case Review Unit, Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler is not expected to get results, but he knows this is the case that might finally kick start his floundering career. Luckily, he already has a suspect. Unluckily, that suspect is Cartwright's son, the man Tyler slept with the night before.
Keeping his possible conflict-of-interest under wraps, Tyler digs into the case alongside Amina Rabbani, an ambitious young Muslim constable and a fellow outsider seeking to prove herself on the force. Soon their investigation will come up against close-lipped townsfolk, an elderly woman with dementia who's receiving mysterious threats referencing a past she can't remember, and an escalating series of conflagrations set by a troubled soul intent on watching the world burn . . .
Author Notes
Russ Thomas grew up in the 80s reading anything he could get his hands on, writing stories, watching television and playing videogames: in short, anything that avoided the Great Outdoors. He spent five years trying to master the Electronic Organ and another five learning Spanish. It didn't take him too long to realize he'd be better off sticking to the writing.After a few 'proper' jobs (among them: pot-washer. optician's receptionist, supermarket warehouse operative, call-center telephonist and storage salesman) he discovered the joys of bookselling, where he could talk to people about books all day. Now a full-time writer, he also teaches creative writing classes and mentors new authors. Firewatching is his first novel.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
When the remains of Gerald Cartwright, a wealthy, reviled businessman in Sheffield, England, are found bricked up in a wall of the Old Vicarage, Cartwright's home until his disappearance six years earlier, ambitious Det. Sgt. Adam Tyler, the principal investigator in Thomas's excellent debut, is grateful to be assigned the high-profile cold case. The night of the discovery, Tyler is picked up in a gay bar by an attractive young man, Oscar, who happens to be Cartwright's son and only heir. Meanwhile, arson fires are set around Sheffield, disturbing residents and confounding police. They spark memories for Lilly and her companion, Edna, who were volunteer firewatchers in London during WWII. The pair played a big hand in raising Oscar, who soon becomes the lead suspect in his father's death, after his mother vanished when he was a child. Distinctive characters include feisty Det. Constable Amina Rabbani and fire captain Paul Enfield, who are often at odds with each other. Red herrings and uncovered family secrets abound. This stunning police procedural marks Thomas as an author to watch. Agent: Sarah Hornsley, Bent Agency. (Feb.)
Booklist Review
Thomas' gritty first novel centers on a murder investigation in Yorkshire, England. Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler is languishing in the Cold Case Review Unit when the discovery of the skeleton of a financier who has been missing for six years offers him the opportunity to prove himself. Except for this one thing: the most likely suspect happens to be someone with whom Tyler recently had a fling. It also doesn't help that his relationship with his fellow officers is strained, at best. Working with another outsider looking for acceptance, Muslim constable Amina Rabbani, Tyler must deal with additional complications, including a mysterious woman with dementia who is apparently being threatened and someone in the shadows who wants the world to burn. Tyler and Rabbani make an intriguing team, and Thomas shows a flair for vivid imagery in this twisty, very dark procedural that one hopes is the launch of a series.--Jeff Ayers Copyright 2020 Booklist
Kirkus Review
A Yorkshire detective untangles an old murder and new arsons.DS Adam Tyler, a cold-case investigator for the South Yorkshire Police, is a bit of a loner, but his boss wants him to network more so he lets Sally-Ann, one of his civilian colleagues, talk him into joining a pub evening with the South Yorkshire Police LGBT Support Network. He doesn't plan to stay long, and when he meets a handsome man at the bar"Sweetheart, he was everyone's type. Even mine," Sally-Ann sayshe abandons the group to go home with him. The next morning, when he gets to work, Sally-Ann tells him there's big news: The body of Gerald Cartwright, a local tycoon and shady character who disappeared years ago, has been found in the basement of his own house during a renovation ordered by his 21-year-old son, who'd just inherited it. Tyler manages to get himself assigned to the investigation though the detective who's been working on it since Cartwright's disappearance doesn't want to hand it over to cold cases; he soon discovers the identity of his one-night stand: Oscar Cartwright, son of the deceased and potential suspect, which further complicates his position. Meanwhile, Edna and Lily, elderly Cartwright retainers of various duties, have begun receiving unsettling anonymous letters, and the whole community is rattled by a series of arsons that seem more and more likely to be related to the discovery of Cartwright's body. As Tyler's investigation slowly uncovers a sordid history of manipulation and abuse, the violence increases and he is assaulted several times. The repetitive nature of these assaults is a weakness in the book, but the richness of Tyler's character and the vividness of his negotiation of his own sexuality and the casual bigotry in his community are effective. The subsidiary characters are lively and believable, the arsons are particularly well described, and though the plot sometimes seems gratuitously complex, this is a rewarding entertainment.A good detective in an incendiary procedural. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
DS Adam Tyler always wondered whether the South Yorkshire Cold Case Review Unit was meant to get results or whether his one-man unit was a PR stunt. He also thought he could be paraded out as the department's token gay detective. Then he fights for what's going to be a high-profile case. Builders discover a body when they knock down a wall in an old house, and it's probably Gerald Cartwright, a prominent businessman who disappeared six years earlier. Tyler needs to hide the problem that could throw him off the case. He had a one-night stand with a primary suspect, Cartwright's son. Then a fire investigator convinces Tyler that an old fire at the house could be linked to a series of blazes now occurring in the vicinity. It takes time, but the team finds a blogger who's writing about the fires--someone who may know the secrets about Cartwright's disappearance. VERDICT Tortured characters and the story's fires ignite a dramatic, riveting debut about fathers, sons, and secrets. Readers who appreciate Ann Cleeves's intricately plotted stories with complicated protagonists will welcome another British series into that fold. [See Prepub Alert, 7/21/19.]--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN
Excerpts
Excerpts
1 pageviews-1 posts, last published Tuesday, 13 September-0 followers the firewatcher It starts with the striking of a match: the thin, dry snap of red powder scratched on white. It is the sound of chemistry-of sulfur, phosphorus, and glass. It is a warm and gentle caress, a pair of thick, strong arms that take hold of you, envelop you, and tell you everything is going to be all right. But you shouldn't have come back. You know that now. You should never have returned to this crumbling Victorian mansion, like something from a horror film, with its grand architecture and Gothic features. The rusted iron gates that lie discarded in the rhododendron bushes. The long, winding, weed-infested driveway. The house itself, squatting in faded glory, brick-blackened and scarred, windowpanes cracked and stained with milky cataracts. The workmen unload their long pipes of scaffolding from the van, laughing and joking, questioning each other's parentage and boasting of their sexual prowess. They lift their tools and cans of paint, and slip back into the gaping maw of the house, back to their great work of restoration. These hired hands dig at your past, knocking down walls that were placed for a reason; unearthing all the buried secrets. You can hear him now, just as before, and only now do you realize that he never really went away. He was there all that time, lying dormant, waiting to be found. Waiting for you to drop your guard. His voice grows louder as he surfaces, clawing his way up through your mind, echoing and barreling around inside your head. He looks out through your eyes . . . and then he screams. You reach for another match, feel the warmth and the beauty and the comfort offered . . . but it's over far too soon, the wood consumed from top to bottom in mere seconds, the flame drawn down into your empty hand, where it gutters and snuffs until there is only the cold and the damp and the dark. The scream is louder now, and this time the match will not be enough. This time the whole world will burn. POSTED BY thefirewatcher AT 5:45 PM 0 COMMENTS The man with the scar on his cheek looks down from the window of the apartment building and wonders if someone has thrown a blanket over Sheffield. Summer has swaddled the city in a haze reminiscent of the smogs of its industrial heritage. Sunlight is funneled through rows of terraced houses just as molten iron once sludged and pooled in the blast furnaces and steel mills of the Don Valley. It spills down from the hills and through the parks, weaving its way between the trunks of trees and out onto the ring road. From several stories below, the man hears the deep bass rumble of music. The latest addition to a chain of real-ale pubs. This city, with its proud tradition of industry and purpose, now courts only leisure. Productivity turned to idleness, he thinks. And the devil makes work for idle hands. He turns to look back at the estate agent standing nervously behind him. He looks over the open-plan living room the agent just referred to as "a blank canvas." Whitewashed walls, not so much as a hint of magnolia; the cheapest kind of laminate flooring, all spongy underfoot where the surface hasn't been prepared properly. The man wonders if they even bothered to clean away the blood before they laid it. The flat is unbearably hot, the air so thick he can taste it. He feels the sun pushing in through the south-facing glass, the heat rising up from the apartments beneath. He wonders what it would be like to live here. Like being buried alive, he imagines. Still, at least it would be cheap to run. The estate agent struggles to hide his nerves. He smiles too much. And his eyes flick constantly toward the bedroom, betraying the fact he knows full well the history of his "one-bed pied-^-terre." The agent finally meets the man's eye, doing his best to avoid the scar. "Of course," he says artfully, "the rooms are much larger than you usually get in this type of property." He crosses to the window and looks out for himself. "And the views . . ." He seems content to leave it at that, unwilling perhaps to push his luck. The man ignores him and heads straight to the door that opens into the bedroom. He has to push hard against the spring-loaded mechanism, and he imagines the room wants to keep him out. His pulse quickens. He half-expects to see the tableau as he remembers it-walls coated in arterial blood, the girl lying splayed across the futon, her head bent unnaturally backward, her dark, lifeless eyes staring up, pleading with him for help. The organs. Laid out in neat little piles around the room, liver, kidneys, spleen; like choice cuts in a butcher's window. But there are only the same whitewashed plaster walls, the same uneven faux-wood flooring. It has been a little over three years since the butcher came for the girl in this flat, and now she lies in the Abbey Lane Cemetery, her innards restored. The man feels a fat bead of sweat launch itself from his armpit and streak down his right-hand side. He resists the urge to scratch it away. The fire door pushes back against his outstretched arm. Behind him, the estate agent clears his throat. "En suite?" he says faintly. But the man doesn't bother to look. He's seen enough. He's disappointed, though he never really expected to find anything after all this time. He tarries now, only out of some perverse pleasure he takes in discomforting the agent. He steps back into the living room, allowing the bedroom door to shut them out. "Eighty-five thousand," he says, as though giving it some serious consideration. And then he realizes he actually is considering it. He needs a new place, and it really is a good buy. The estate agent nods encouragingly and echoes his thoughts: "I doubt you'll find better at this price." The agent's opportunism irritates him. "So what's the catch?" he asks. The obsequious salesman wrings his hands, and the man with the scar remembers the warm, clammy palm he was forced to shake when he arrived. "The owner wants a quick sale. It's been on the market for some time now." The agent glances once, quickly, at the bedroom door. "I understand the vendor is open to offers . . ." "I'll give it some thought," he says. A good deal is a good deal, after all. If he could get past the fact a woman was once gutted in his bedroom. Could he get past that? Perhaps, for the right price. Back downstairs the agent leaves him at the entrance to the building with another sweaty handshake. "I'll call you toward the weekend then," he says. "Give you a chance to give it some serious consideration." "You do that." The agent begins to turn and then, almost as an afterthought, says, "Sorry, remind me what the name was again?" "Tyler," says the man with the scar. "Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler." The ever-present grin on the estate agent's face finally slips. His hand falls away to his side, and he wipes his damp fingers down the right leg of his trousers. He turns and hurries away to his car. Now Tyler is the one smiling, the scar tugging at the corner of his mouth. The pedestrianized city center is beginning to empty, security gates inching their way protectively across shop windows. Tyler stops outside an estate agentÕs window. This eveningÕs visit has reminded him he really does need to find a place and start putting some of his meager salary toward a mortgage instead of into the equally slippery palm of his landlord. He scans down past the country mansions of the Peak District through the detached leafy suburbs, to the bottom row and his own more modest price range. It leaves him a choice of three: a bungalow in a highly sought-after part of town (in need of extensive modernization); a studio over a Chinese takeaway (easy access to local amenities); and a first-floor flat (ideal starter home for young professional) in the apartment block in which heÕs already renting. All of them are significantly more expensive than the butchered girlÕs place. He catches sight of his own reflection in the window, where the scar on his left cheek stands out, livid and inflamed. It's always worse in hot weather; no wonder the estate agent seemed so edgy. The town hall clock chimes the half hour. He might be getting a bit hung up on the girl. He knows her name, of course, knows all the names of the cases he reviews, but he prefers to distance himself whenever he can. He has a tendency to get too close, as the detective chief inspector often reminds him. Review, append, move on. How would she feel about him revisiting a three-year-old crime scene? He considers, not for the first time, whether the Cold Case Review Unit (or "sea-crew," as it is so inelegantly referred to by his superiors) was ever really intended to get results. He suspects it was more of a PR stunt, a way for the force to show that no stone was ever left unturned. The plan was simply to apply new techniques to old cases. It envisaged new DNA evidence, advanced techniques for lifting fingerprints, centralized databases that threw up previously unlinked crimes and pointed out the similarities between them. But Tyler has taken his remit a little further than that. New technology is all well and good-at twenty-nine he hardly considers himself a Luddite-but sometimes he finds it's far simpler than that. All it really needs is a fresh pair of eyes. The sifting through of old case files, the re-interviewing of witnesses and retired colleagues. A question not asked that should have been. The DCI indulges him, as long as he gets results. And he does get them, more often than not. Still, she doesn't appreciate him lingering too long on any one case. A chant starts up in a nearby pub, someone downing a yard of ale. He checks his phone while he waits for the lights to change at a crossing and finds a string of missed calls from Sally-Ann. He listens to three increasingly excitable messages reminding him about the meeting tonight and considers whether he still intends to go. He looks again at his watch. He hates this time of day. Sometimes, when people find out what he does for a living, they ask him whether he struggles to sleep at night, in light of all the horrible things he must see. But sleep has never been a problem for Tyler. No, it's the early evening that troubles him. The time when people with lives untouched by tragedy are preparing meals for loved ones, and wondering if they have PE tomorrow and whether or not the kit's been washed. The time that Mum gets home from work and the kids come in for tea. That's the time that reaches out to remind him of all the horror in the world. It's the time when the news breaks. He hovers with one foot on the crossing. Left would take him to Sally-Ann, right would take him home. He turns left. He decides not to call her back, for as disjointed as her voicemails are, Sally-Ann is far worse on the phone. She's forever hesitating, as though waiting for her first sentence to reach its destination before embarking on the second. Inevitably they end up speaking at the same time and the conversation descends into a Norman Collier-style faulty-mic routine. Instead, he texts her: On my way. O'Hagan's is a sports bar and Irish theme pub combined; between each of a dozen or so television screens hangs a pithy limerick picked out in Gaelic script: "It's no health if the glass is not emptied"; "The wine is sweet, the paying bitter"; "Go carefully with a full cup." There's a match on, and the place is filled with a mixture of football fans and the early evening work crowd, a clashing checkerboard of groups: red and white, black and gray. The voices of the largely male crowd create a deep bass rumble of background noise, a roiling sea of testosterone. He wonders who chose the venue since it doesn't exactly fit the group's style. He forces his way to the bar, ignoring the disgruntled looks of people who have been waiting patiently to be served, too scared or too polite to kick up a fuss. He catches the eye of the girl behind the bar and raises a hand. She comes straight to him. He uses the time while he waits for his pint to scan the crowd, and spots Sally-Ann waving enthusiastically from a booth at the back wall. He acknowledges her with a dip of his head. Once he has his pint, he makes his way across to her just as the collective rise and fall of an almost-goal cheer cuts across the room. She greets him with a bone-crushing hug and a kiss that misses both cheeks. There aren't many people who make him feel small, but Sally-Ann manages it. She's an inch or two shorter than he is, but the heels she's wearing tonight give her the edge. She's well built, what his parents' generation might generously have called statuesque. The lads at the station are less charitable. They treat her the same way they do the oversized photocopier, like she's an obstacle to be negotiated rather than a human being. Not just the lads, either. Other women, too. There's something in the way people look at her, he's noticed, as though her physique is a condition that might be catching. For some reason none of them can see beyond the excess flesh to the pretty woman underneath. Probably because she hides it so well. She has savagely cropped blond hair that looks as though she might have taken the scissors to it herself, and wears elaborate Gothic outfits that succeed only in emphasizing her size and shape. It's as though she's ashamed of her appearance and yet stubbornly defiant at the same time. He likes that about her. Tyler has no problem with rebellion. Tonight she's wearing a long-sleeved black velvet top with furry frills at the cuffs and collar, skinny-fit jeans that turn her thighs into dark-blue sausages, and ruby-red heels ^ la Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. There's a bit more personality to the outfit than the one she wears for work, but essentially it's the same. He feels the dampness still gathered in the armpits of his own thin cotton T-shirt and wonders how she's managing not to pass out in the heat. Excerpted from Firewatching by Russ Thomas All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.