Deadlight — Graham Hurley

Freshly promoted to the elite Major Crimes Unit, Faraday is thrown into the deep end with the investigation into the murder of prison officer Paul Coughlin. Was the violent Coughlin killed by a recently released con he brutalised in prison? Or is his death a legacy of a wider, more savage violence from twenty years before? Coughlin was an ex-petty officer in the Royal Navy. He served on HMS Accolade, a Type 21 frigate sunk during the Falklands war with the loss of 19 men. Could it be that that tragedy has hidden the evidence of a crime that has waited 20 years to be avenged? Portsmouth, the Royal Navy's major south coast base, has thrived on the riches that war brings but it has also suffered; a city and its people living with the long shadows of the terrible emotional and physical price of conflict.

In this novel Graham has focused on Portsmouth's ambiguious relationship with the Royal Navy and, as Faraday attempts to penetrate the wall of silence thrown up by the Navy, presents a further riveting chapter in the life of his uniquely appealing hero. Graham Hurley has recreated Portsmouth as the obvious locale for a series of gritty and impassioned crime novels.