THE HEIGHTS is the second book in the Crane and Drake series from Parker Bilal. The first book in the series ‘The Divinities’ received great feedback, such as ‘terrific crime fiction rooted in geopolitics’ from the Sunday Times, and ‘told with a delicate elegance . . . it promises to be a fine series’ from the Daily Mail. For book chat about the newly published, THE HEIGHTS, please do keep scrolling. With thanks to the publisher for the review copy, and Anne for the tour invite.

The Blurb:

What starts with the gruesome discovery of a severed head on the Tube soon becomes personal for former DI Cal Drake. After one betrayal too many, Drake has abandoned the police force to become a private detective. He’s teamed up with enigmatic forensic pathologist Dr Rayhana Crane and it’s not long before the case leads them to the darkest corners of the nation’s capital and in dangerously close contact with an international crime circuit, a brutal local rivalry and a very personal quest for retribution. With the murder victim tied to Drake’s past, his new future is about to come under threat.

My thoughts…

This book begins after Cal Drake, a former Met DI, has left the police force, and begun work as a private detective, partnering with Dr. Rayhana Crane, a forensic psychologist. The story begins as this partnership starts to work together, and coinciding with the disturbing discovery of a severed head of a woman on a tube train. The plot develops and draws in Drake’s past during an undercover drugs operation, and a complex web of gangs, drugs, suspicion and plotting develops.

I really enjoyed the plot layers, and you have to keep focused as past and present collide in this well written crime thriller. Added into the mix is a seemingly Middle East connected abduction, that spirals into another connection, bringing both investigations on a similar tangent. The relationship between Drake and Crane adds a further dimension, and although suffers from mistrust, they make an interesting team. Both have layers, and I may have some missing gaps from not reading ‘The Divinities’, the first book in the series, but it didn’t seem to matter. There’s a lot of depth and complex detail in the book, which can slow the pace, but when it picks up it hurtles along!

It’s dark, intense, disturbing and complex. A decent crime thriller read.

The Author

Parker Bilal is the pseudonym of Jamal Mahjoub, the critically acclaimed literary novelist. He is the author of the Makana Investigations series, the third of which, The Ghost Runner, was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year Award. The Divinities, the first in his Crane and Drake London crime series, was published in 2019. Born in London, he has lived in a number of places, including the UK, Denmark, Spain and, currently, the Netherlands.

@Parker_Bilal | jamalmahjoub.com

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