Book Review Firewatching by Russ Thomas

I was delighted to host a panel recently at Hull Noir 2021, where Russ was one of the authors I interviewed. Russ is such a stand up guy and helped make hosting the panel a real joy, as did the other panellists./ 

Firewatching is Russ's debut novel and what a firecracker (see what I did there?) it is. 

The Blurb

Available here

One wrong move will ignite the city . . .
 

A body is found bricked into a wall of the Old Vicarage. From the state of the hands, it’s clear the dead man
was buried alive. When the man is connected to an old missing person’s case, Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler is called.

 

After an ‘incident’, Tyler needs this case to go well in order to prove himself and get his career back on track. But he soon discovers that he has a connection to the case that hopelessly compromises him. He makes the snap decision not to tell his superiors, certain that he is the only one that can solve the crime. Now Tyler must move carefully to find out the truth, without destroying the case or himself.

Meanwhile, someone in the city knows exactly what happened to the body. Someone who is watching Tyler closely. Someone with an unhealthy obsession with fire . . .

My Thoughts

Firewatching is one of those novels that grabs you from the very start with a range of characters that in turn make you grin, grimace and laugh out loud as well as draw a tear to your eye on occasion. Set in Sheffield, this hooked me straight away. I love a Northern Noir story and that's what I got.

The characters felt authentic to me - flawed and vulnerable, I was drawn to the main character Adam Tyler - a disgraced officer relegated to cold cases. Adam's a bit of a loner, reluctant to forge relationships and he's a dogged investigator who perhaps needs a little bit of training (or a large bit) on his inter-personal skills. I enjoyed the way the story unfolded through the eyes of both the detectives and through the eyes of an extremely unreliable narrator with dementia. Taking us back in time to events leading to the current arson investigation, as far back as WW2, I felt present with the characters. So much so that I could almost smell the fire from the bombings in London and feel the biting cold too. 

Thomas really gets to grips with his dementia character and I really felt for her, having seen my own mu  go through the various stages of dementia. Right to the end I was convinced I knew who'd done it, but alas, I was wrong as Thomas in a final flourishing twist swept my confidence away from me with a surprising denouement. 

Loved, loved, loved Firewatching and am delighted that Nighthawking, the second in the series is about to his the shelves, so watch out for my review of that too. 

I'll leave you with the blurb for Nighthawking to tempt you in ... 

Nighhawking Blurb

Available here

Sheffield’s beautiful Botanical Gardens – an oasis of peace in a world filled with sorrow, confusion and pain. And then, one morning, a body is found in the Gardens. A young woman, dead from a stab wound, buried in a quiet corner. Police quickly determine that the body’s been there for months. It would have gone undiscovered for years – but someone just sneaked into the Gardens and dug it up.
 
Who is the victim? Who killed her and hid her body? Who dug her up? And who left a macabre marker on the body?
 
In his quest to find her murderer, DS Adam Tyler will find himself drawn into the secretive world of nighthawkers: treasure-hunters who operate under cover of darkness, seeking the lost and valuable . . . and willing to kill to keep what they find.

Author Bio

RUSS THOMAS was born in Essex, raised in Berkshire and now lives in

Sheffield. After a few 'proper' jobs (among them: pot-washer, optician's receptionist, supermarket warehouse operative, call-centre telephonist, and storage salesman) he discovered the joys of bookselling, where he could talk to people about books all day. Firewatching is his debut novel.