The debut thriller from a bright new Scottish talent set to rival Ian Rankin. It's DS Logan McRae's first day back on the job after a year off on the sick, and it couldn't get much worse. Four-year-old David Reid's body is discovered in a ditch, strangled, mutilated and a long time dead. There's a killer stalking the Granite City and the local media are baying for blood. If that wasn't enough, Logan also has to contend with a new boss, DI Insch, who doesn't suffer fools gladly and thinks everyone's a fool, and his own ex-girlfriend, the beautiful but chilly Isobel MacAlister, who also happens to be the chief pathologist. The only good news is WPC 'Ball Breaker' Watson, Logan's new guardian angel. The dead are piling up in the morgue almost as fast as the snow on the streets, and Logan knows time is running out. More children are going missing. More are going to die. If Logan isn't careful, he's going to end up joining them. Set in Aberdeen, where the rainy season lasts all year, criminal gangs vie for supremacy on the streets and the oil industry brings an influx of wealth and vice, this is a gritty, powerful and page-turning debut thriller by a writer with a wonderfully observant eye and a characteristically Scottish sense of gallows humour.

RABCK to catsalive to go with the second one :-) xxx

Woohoo!! Thanks, Giz.

Great book. Gritty but not completely bleak, except for the weather. Ugh! I groaned every time Logan took another hit - will his poor guts ever heal, I wonder. I would have sent the Ice Queen, Isobel, down - the bitch deserved it. Good on the procedural side too, but not excessively detailed. It's quite a big book but kept me interested the whole way through. I enjoyed the humour - gallows though it was. I look forward to reading the next one, Dying Light.

Gritty Scottish police drama - well written and believable. They certainly breed them tough over there. Even the weather is miserable. I'd certainly read more from the same author.

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Sent to bekoh for the oz vbb.

thanks catsalive

Harsh and unexpectedly funny. I enjoyed this read, especially all the descriptions of the unrelenting rain (it was so present it was almost a minor character in the plot).