Imagine the scene: you’re a hitman, hired to take out property developer Jason Florens before he can ruin someone else’s nefarious plans. But you reach the site where he is and someone has been there before you, he’s gagged and cable tied to the bath taps, you remove the gag.
‘Oh, God,’ Floren wails, his eyes wild. ‘You’re police, aren’t you?’ The man’s overalls don’t exactly shout ‘police’, but Floren is traumatised, his judgement impaired, so his confusion is understandable.
This is Sam Turner – a man so far outside the law that the question is almost laughable. But he keeps a straight face and lets Floren make up his own mind.
‘Fuck,’ Floren groans, tears still running down his face. ‘You’re going to arrest me, aren’t you?’
‘Not necessarily,’ Sam says kindly. ‘Tell me everything that happened, and maybe we can work something out.’
Hope blossoms in the property developer’s eyes. …
Chapter two takes an abrupt turn, we meet Sergeant Rick Turner at a warehouse blaze. A whole lotta heroin has gone up in flames – making the air rather potent. Rick had been working on those using the warehouse for a month. There are oddities though, it looks like the fire was called in as it was started – the caller suggested sending hazmat units.
Chapter three introduces us to a small group of four men and a woman, celebrating their success. Cap, Brock, Frosty, Pug and Prozac. Cap makes sure they realise it didn’t go perfectly though, someone could have got killed, they were lucky.
So three chapters in and three strands set in motion. The dominant one will be Rick’s, as the multi-agency team he is part of working on OCGs (Organised Criminal Gangs) look at the warehouse fire and the guy who was running it, Emin. It’s not long before they get word of Emin’s plans to set up a new place in the East End, they’re looking at a warehouse in Limehouse. Rick goes and looks at it too and sets up surveillance opposite. The vigilante group are on the case too. Things thereafter get very complicated, very quickly. Shots are fired. People get hurt.
The vigilantes are an interesting bunch, with their campaign to wage social justice, but I can’t really tell you more about them without spoiling things. There is plenty of rivalry on show inside the task force though with the different agencies involved, with some of the high-ups disagreeing on how the operations should be run and what statements they should put out. The action never stops. Rick has a new worry too, thinking he’s being followed.
It turns out that Sam is Rick’s elder brother which, if I’d read the first book in the series, Dead Man Walking, would have been obvious right from the start. Rick is always wondering what Sam would say, as if he’s a guiding voice on his shoulder. The two are apparently close but estranged due to Sam’s alternative lifestyle. There is obviously a story arc to Rick and Sam’s relationship that left me rather lost for a good while, but things eventually become clearer in that strand of the novel as the ante is well and truly upped by Sam and the brothers’ past comes back to haunt them. Both Rick and Sam are compelling characters. Rick is a great detective, solid and really good at his job, but in comparison with Sam, being the good one, he’s rather boring. Sam is unpredictable, a sociopath, and much more interesting!
I really enjoyed Blood Debt and will look forward to the return of Rick and hopefully Sam, but I should have read Dead Man Walking first to get the best from this novel.
Source: Review copy. Headline HQ paperback original, 288 pages.
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This thriller appears to have the thrills firmly thrust inside with the plot and the manner of telling it all – it sounds not only gripping but also engaging!
I like your way of putting it Chris! Yes – but it’d definitely be better to read the other book first.