Summer of Ghosts, by PD Viner

The market for crime novels is huge. Massive. Ginormous. It seems we can't get enough of them - from scandi-noir to good old-fashioned whodunnits.

Agatha Christie is still ranked best-selling author and is still the most borrowed author from the libraries. It is, I think, a very English thing, too. Not that other countries are lacking in their own crime genres, but we do rather love them here. I think we can blame a lot on Midsomer Murders for that.

It seems to me that PD Viner has joined a very illustrious band with this book. It's a haunting tale of memory and mortality. It could so easily have become a book about revenge (after all, what father wouldn't want the most terrible revenge on the murderer of his daughter?). But then, not every daughter's father is a notorious London drug lord. Franco will call in every debt that he's ever been owed to find the murderer, including a debt owed to him by DI Tom Bevans.

Bevans has his own ghosts to lay to rest, with every unsolved crime weighing heavily on his shoulders.

This is a genuinely fascinating and entertaining book. If you like crime novels that are a bite above the rest and enjoy some clever plotting, then this is for you.

The book raises some interesting questions about loss and remembering loved ones with a clarity of vision and hard won emotional control. DI Tom Bevans is set to be a classic detective.