Vendetta

Mac, an undercover police officer tasked with infiltrating a brutal arms ring, wakes up in a seedy hotel room next to the corpse of his lover and a whole stack of evidence suggesting he might have killed her.

From here things just get worse. Over the next twenty four hours he must negotiate the mean streets of London in search of the real killer pursued by relentless investigator and old friend DI Rio Wray.

This is a book about a troubled man having the ultimate bad day; that just keeps on getting worse. A breakneck, adrenaline fuelled ride through the darker corners of the capital, a world populated by Russian mobsters, their hired hands and undercover cops where nothing is what it seems and allegiances are fluid.

Given the frantic pace she sets on page one and keeps up for a further four hundred and the presence of a central character capable of taking the sort of punishment that would hospitalise a regiment of  commandos  Dreda Say Mitchell’s novel should be firmly in the entertaining but silly category. It certainly hits the former target and manages to deftly avoid the latter.

This is done by Mitchell giving several of her key characters conflicted loyalties that both make them vulnerable and capable of enduring otherwise intolerable situations. She also writes with clarity and authenticity about the parts of London that don’t make it into the tourist brochures where life is cheap and crime is just business as usual.

This is a compelling and action packed thriller that will please fans of her previous books and have those who haven’t read her work before wondering what they’ve been missing. Dreda Say Mitchell is one of the most distinctive voices in British crime writing and on the strength of this book is at the top of her game.