Move over, John Rebus, you’ve got company

I like reading police procedural novels, and Alfie Robins’s Reprisal is the best police procedural novel I’ve read in a long time. There is a vicious serial killer making the rounds of northern England’s Kingston-on-Hull (known locally simply as Hull), and Detective Chief Inspector Philip Marlowe and his team have to find him fast. Never mind that the victims are drug addicts, this killer, who administers the final coup de grace by driving a four inch nail into his victim’s skull, gives everyone the chills, and the Superintendent wants him off the streets by yesterday at the latest.  

Reprisal is a classic, bringing to life northern England’s Kingston-on-Hull (known locally simply as Hull) the way Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus novels put Edinburgh on the map.

Move over, John Rebus, you’ve got competition in Hull. 

The UK’s Night Publishing has scored a crime novel coup with this one. My plea to 

Alfie Robins is a simple one: When is the next installment of Marlowe and his harried crew coming out? Hurry up, please. We’re dying out here waiting for it.  

A definite 5 star read.