This is just about as good as I could want a crime novel to be. Staincliffe’s Manchester is the real thing, it’s not been sanitised or seedified and it’s a great backdrop for this story. I thought Val McDermid’s Kate Brannigan books had a good Mancunian feel to them but they’ve got nothing on this book for bringing the city to life. On every other page I found myself remembering something else about the place. I don’t know how the book would read if you didn’t already know Manchester but I don’t think it would harm the book any, I hope you’d find the town as real as I did.

I liked the plot so much that I find myself not wanting to say too much about it here as one of the best things about it was the unexpectedness of some of the events. There’s plenty of surprises and no authorly cheating.

The characters are probably the star part of the book though, I especially like the protagonist’s four year old daughter and the fact that a single mother investigator is a twist on the usual crime story.

Definitely one of the best books I’ve read in ages, it’s way too long since I read Dead Wrong (the third in this series I think, Looking for Trouble is the first) and I won’t wait so long to catch up on the rest of Staincliffe’s work.