I’ve been looking around for this series for a long time. The early books in the series seem to be in permanent out-of-print-ness so I gave up on the idea of collecting them and plumped for the library.

This book introduces to Charlie Priest, DI in the Yorkshire town of Heckley. Heckley is has to be somewhere around here (where here is Huddersfield) but I can’t quite pinpoint its fictional roots, I get tied up in references to the A61 to Leeds, the Rochdale Road and the Bradford Road and when a car chase passes B and Q I get all excited. Sad, isn’t it.

Two things I liked especially about this book were: firstly, the fact that it takes place over quite a lengthy timespan which makes a change from most detective fiction where cases get wrapped up in a few days and secondly, the fact that the detectives work on a number of cases at the same time that tangle together rather than an all out murder enquiry for instance. I thought these elements made an interesting book really engaging.

I have one of the latest books in this series Chill Factor scheduled for a bookgroup discussion in January so I’m not going to get to read in series order but I am likely to read the whole of this series which comes highly recommended by reading friends of mine.