Four Below
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
Snow falls on the innocent and guilty alike...
Heavy weather, and it's still only November. D I McLusky has settled into his new job in Bristol but the severe freeze shows an unfamiliar side to the city. After the conviction of a drug baron earlier in the year a new kingpin secures the hub of drug crime in Bristol. But how secure does he feel?
A series of seemingly unconnected murders, accidents and dying drug users, investigated by McLusky and his team, slowly reveal the web of violence that spreads across the city. Narrow strips of a cut-up photograph arriving piecemeal at the Bristol Herald's offices may hold vital clues but will the completed puzzle reach McLusky in time to prevent more deaths?
The private lives of both McLusky and his rival D I Kat Fairfield take unexpected turns too, making the atmosphere at Albany Road station, already considerably cooled by the failed heating system, icier still...
Praise for Peter Helton's :
'Skilful plotting, wry humour and deftly drawn characters mark this debut' Library Journal
'Helton provides breezy prose and a lively cast' Kirkus Reviews
'Lively prose and a vivid picture of the city of Bath' Publishers Weekly
'Helton has created a wonderfully caustic main character who careens through this action-packed debut' Booklist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The English city of Bristol, during a bitter cold winter, provides the backdrop for Helton's atmospheric second crime novel featuring Det. Insp. Liam McCluskey (after 2011's Falling More Slowly). Helton focuses on McCluskey's continuing difficulty in adjusting to his new posting, after having been in Southampton, but also spares time for the perspectives of his colleagues, notably fellow Det. Insp. Kat Fairfield, and a variety of witnesses and victims in a wave of violence apparently connected to drug kingpin Ray Fenton's recent jailing. In true procedural style, the brooding, disheveled detective's attempt to discover the common cause behind such disparate events as a criminal's fatal car crash, the discovery of severed body parts, and the sale of poisoned heroin reveals much about police work's unglamorous reality. Helton's strong feeling for character, place, and mordant humor should compensate most readers for a plot that never quite gathers momentum.
