It’s been some time since I blogged, but the other day I tried searching this site to see if I had read a Michael Connelly book already, so it felt like a good time to start again.
This somewhat worn hardback came from a charity shop, and is signed by the author, so must be worth at least the £2.99 that I paid for it. It’s the first that I’ve read by this author and is one of a series, so it was worth a chance as I do love to follow a series of books for a given character.
The main character in this book is Inspector McRae, who is a Scottish detective, now part of Professional Standards. Due to lack of staffing, he finds himself Senior Investigating Officer for a murder, and quite a grisly case too. This was hard to read, both due to the nature of the investigation (multiple child abductions) and also the rough characterisation. McRae is surrounded by uncaring, incompetent colleagues and a confusing ex-partner with whom he still works, Roberta Steel. Their relationship is very complex, coming to this book late in the series, they have a child together but she has a new wife and their relationship is now hugely antagonistic.
As well as uncovering a child-trading ring, the plot also includes the odd death of Detective Inspector Bell, who was thought to have committed suicide 2 years earlier. If DI Bell was still alive, who did they bury last time, and who knew his secrets and murdered him now?
The last few chapters were really gripping as the author tied up all loose ends, and despite struggling earlier to push through the book, I warmed to some of the other (very flawed) characters in the book. Maybe worth starting at the beginning of the series to better understand the back stories.
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This book is a sequel to Cold Blood, which I hadn’t read. That meant I had little understanding about why the main character, Nick Stone, and his team were being hunted by the mysterious “Owl” and what intelligence they were hiding as leverage to keep themselves safe.
The sub-title of this book is “Secret diaries of a Junior Doctor”, because Adam Kay was for some years a doctor in the National Health Service. His stories are often hilarious but they also reveal just what stress the doctors and the NHS as a whole are under. He had a successful career as a doctor, including several promotions – but ultimately, the crazy demands of the job took its toll on his well-being as well as his relationships and he had to leave.
Suppose intelligence discovered that a terrorist organisation was planning a fresh atrocity that would shock the world, but had no further leads to prevent it. Then it might be appropriate to take the longest of shots – send an agent into Iraq to infiltrate that organisation at a senior level, in the hope that the secret is shared with him. 
This book is set in the early days of the space race. Scientists have assessed the risk of previously unknown organisms being released on Earth (either alien bacteria brought back to Earth by rockets or Earth-bound organisms changed by exposure to the environment of space). The result is Wildfire – an underground facility with multiple levels of increasing levels of sterilisation, in which the scientists would research any such contaminated material.
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