Deadlight - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0752850970 ISBN 13: 9780752850979

Synopsis

A twenty-year-old crime throws DI Joe Faraday into the violent legacy of the Falklands War...

Freshly promoted to the elite Major Crimes Team, DI Joe Faraday is thrown into the deep end with the investigation into the murder of prison officer Paul Coughlin. Was the violent Coughlin killed by a recently released con he brutalised in prison? Or is his death a legacy of a wider, more savage violence from twenty years before?

Coughlin was an ex-petty officer in the Royal Navy. Not much liked, he served on HMS Accolade, a Type 21 frigate sunk during the Falklands war with the loss of 19 men.

If Faraday is to solve the murder, he must first penetrate the wall of silence thrown up by the Navy. But as he digs deeper, he uncovers a disturbing connection to a crime that has waited twenty years to be avenged...

About this title

Review

Graham Hurley's Deadlightstretches the stock assumptions of the police procedural--he is good on the ways in which the preconceptions of the investigating officers can hopelessly contaminate their judgement and the way crucial pieces of evidence can entirely turn a case on its head.

Someone kicked and battered ex-navy prison officer Coughlin until he choked to death on his own vomit--he was not a likable man and part of the trouble for the investigative team is that there are almost too many leads. As prison officer, Coughlin made it his business to mock and humiliate anyone who claimed to be innocent, for example, several of the investigators believe they need look no further than his principal victim. Coughlin adopted a brutally aggressive persona in Internet chat rooms and was hated by his shipmates for being a bully and a rapist--yet there were people who loved him in spite of his awfulness.

This is an intelligent thriller because it remembers that no-one is all of a simple piece--most of the police in Hurley's cast, even his viewpoint figure Faraday, are only marginally less flawed than the villains. --Roz Kaveney

Review

""This is how a crime novel should be written, and it pushes Hurley right to the forefront of British crime writers, which is where he richly deserves to be"" Independent on Sunday"

This is how a crime novel should be written, and it pushes Hurley right to the forefront of British crime writers, which is where he richly deserves to be--INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

Edition details

• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0752850970
• ISBN 13: 9780752850979
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352