It has been a popular crime fiction setting for years, thanks to the likes of Luca Veste and Kevin Sampson, and Liverpool has seen something of a renaissance lately, helped by The Responder and This City is Ours on the BBC.
Time to add another name to the list, in the shape of debut author Sean Watkin, whose book is set firmly in the city. In fact, the story begins on the banks of the Mersey itself, where the naked, mutilated and violated body of missing teenager Kelly Stack has been left like some kind of macabre art installation and spotted by an early-morning jogger.
There’s a killer on the loose in Liverpool and Kelly is their third victim. But the police are floundering, in particular the Merseyside force’s Protecting Vulnerable People Unit who have so far failed to locate all three young girls before they were killed. It’s that lack of progress and ideas that leads to a call to DCI Win de Silva. This is pretty much a last resort, because she’s currently on compassionate leave following the death by suicide of her husband, Ritchie.
She’s lured back in an advisory capacity, but soon De Silva is pulled into working full-time. She has a knack of finding hidden patterns, getting inside the perpetrator’s head and seeing things that others tend to miss. This is a killer who is working under the radar; with her help, perhaps the myriad seemingly unconnected pieces can be brought together at last?
But there’s a catch. She must team up once again with DS Barclay, a colleague and friend who reached out again and again after Ritchie’s death but was ghosted by De Silva. He’s taken it personally and there is something of an atmosphere between them, but they need to put all that aside when another girl disappears. Time for De Silva to make a choice – commit herself fully to the investigation, or leave the police for good. This is billed as a DCI De Silva novel, so I think you can guess her decision.
But to get back into real investigation mode, she’ll need to ditch the unhealthy relationship she’s developed with drink, and to put thoughts of Ritchie’s death on the back burner. Which is hard, because De Silva is convinced he killed himself after finding out about her affair with a work colleague – someone who is still in the periphery of her life.
By threading the narrative between De Silva, Barclay and the faceless killer, Sean Watkin keeps the storytelling momentum going at full tilt. It soon becomes clear that the murderer has issues of his own, but neither of the main police protagonists has a smooth-running personal life either – and the stark differences and odd similarities between all three certainly offer food for thought.
Liverpool, from its tourist magnets to the dark, dingy and dangerous back streets, is painted warts and all and it is clear this author has a knowledge and abiding love for the city. Clever little nods – such as the journalist from The Sun being snubbed in a police press conference – will raise a knowing smirk from Scouse readers and beyond.
With themes including grief, loyalty, abuse and revenge, this police procedural manages to handle tough subject matter with skill and its clever plotting sets out to wrong-foot the reader… and succeeds. It’s clear that Sean Watkin is a debut author to look out for – and the good news is that another DCI De Silva novel is already in the pipeline.
There are surprising Liverpool links in Ann Cleeves’ Matthew Venn series – including The Raging Storm, reviewed here.
Canelo Crime
Print/Kindle/iBook
£2.99
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
