Sadistic killers everywhere. Keeps you reading nonstop. ( )

Ashes to Ashes – Heck Just Gets Better

Detective Sergeant Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg is back and is really facing death in the face, as he looks at the remnants of his family. Paul Finch gives us the another outing for Heck, moving the action from London, to his nemesis home town in Greater Manchester. Once again Finch delivers on all levels with Ashes to Ashes, keeping you guessing and involved from beginning to end.

Heck and his team from the Serious Crimes Unit are on the hunt for one of the most unremarkable, boring looking men in London. John Sagan is a forgettable man, you would never notice him. He does have a side line in torture and execution for hire for whoever has the most money. Nobody is quite sure how many he has killed.

When an operation goes wrong, and a colleague is killed, Sagan is on the run and headed north. They get a tip off that he is in the town of Bradburn part of the Greater Manchester conurbation. The problem for Heck is it means going home, to a town he fell out of love with, along with his family twenty years before. With those that remember him, he will not be popular.

What Heck at the SCU did not expect was to walk into the middle of an underworld war, and where someone is using a flamethrower to kill people. It looks like a young whippersnapper is trying to usurp Manchester kingpin Vic Ship with all the weapons he can muster. It is Heck that goes toe to toe with both sides and that may just backfire. To solve the case, he may endanger his life and that of his uncle, but at what cost?

You could see the symbolism of the flamethrower being a cleansing agent, but is it really? Bradburn is being cleansed but at what cost to the town? Finch’s prose brings light even in the darkest moments of this thriller, and with a pace that makes you turn the page. The worst part of this thriller is that it comes to a close eventually. ( )

Not one for the weak-stomached as the violence is extensive and quite graphic. A sadistic serial killer narrowly escapes Heck's clutches in London and heads up north under contract to a Manchester gangland leader who has found himself caught up in a vicious gang warfare with a local competitor in Bradburn, Heck's home town. Hopefully a far-fetched story but one which sucks you in. ( )