by James Delargy
SYNOPSIS
A town under fire. A detective with something to prove. A killer hiding in plain sight.
The small town of Rislake in the picturesque Blue Mountains is about to be engulfed by a major bushfire. The order has been given for the residents to clear out.
But a last sweep uncovers one person is missing: Tracey Hilmeyer, wife of one of the firefighters tackling the blaze.
Detective Kennard is in town to help with crowd control, but instead he finds himself driving straight towards the inferno to look for Tracey at the Hilmeyer home. When he gets there, he finds her dead at the bottom of the stairs, and it’s clear she was murdered.
With the evacuation almost complete there is barely enough time to save the living never mind the dead. But Detective Kennard has something to prove and cannot let this one go.
Can he solve her murder before the crime scene, and the entire town, turns to ash?
REVIEW
In Rislake, a body is lying at the bottom of the stairs in one of the houses in the estate. The problem is that nobody knows she is there, and a major bushfire currently sweeping through the town means that almost everyone is either evacuating, or preoccupied with tackling the devastating fires. DS Kennard, after recently transferring to the Blue Mountains, refuses to let Tracey down and is determined to investigate as thoroughly as possible in the challenging circumstances.
I love reading Outback Noir (even though I haven't read as many as I'd like), and Into The Flames had a unique concept which made it stand out from other crime fiction books I've read set in Australia. Despite the discovery of the body, it's a race against time to preserve or even manage to document any evidence at all from the crime scene before the blaze sweeps through and destroys everything. There's no opportunity to meticulously check for forensics, it's difficult to properly return to the scene to look for clues or evidence, and there's only just enough time to ascertain that this is in fact, a murder case.
The bushfire was such a fantastic element to add into a crime novel, it increased the sense of urgency and tension for me as the reader, while at the same time creating additional complications for the Police. Some of them even risking their own lives to work the case.
Suffocating and atmospheric, Into The Flames had a fantastic premise, was really inventive and had a particularly intense final few chapters! Perfect if you're a fan of the classic 'flawed detective'.
Thanks to Anne Cater - @RandomTTours, James Delargy - @JDeLargyAuthor and Bantam Books - @PenguinUKBooks for the opportunity to read and review.
Publisher: Simon Schuster UK Genre: Crime Thriller / Outback Noir
ISBN: 978-1398525146
Pages: 448pp
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