David Jackson - A Tapping At My Door

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Slightly clichéd and silly, but enjoyable

This is a very decent police thriller.  It has a lot of the clichés of the genre, but it's well written and quite gripping.

This is the first in a series set in Liverpool starring Detective Sergeant Nathan Cody.  Cody is – wait for it – a man with a traumatic past with which he is struggling to come to terms and he's an unorthodox but successful officer who is a member of the Major Incident Team.  In the first few pages an old flame (the Real Love Of His Life, of course, but now engaged to another) joins the squad, so we get romantic tensions…and so on.  The plot is driven by a vicious serial killer with an unusual MO who is (of course) Sending A Message To The Police, and builds to a Cornered Killer Climax In An Iconic Location.  It's hardly fresh and original, then – but it's actually rather well done, and if you don't mind dodging the clichés as they fly at you and can suspend disbelief from a reasonable height it's an enjoyable read.

David Jackson creates decent characters and Cody is an engaging, flawed protagonist. He also generates a pretty good sense of place in Liverpool, he structures the plot well and he is good at drip-feeding hints which build to a big reveal (about Cody's past, for example) to keep the reader hooked.  His prose is generally in short, staccato sentences, often in short staccato paragraphs which keep the pace moving well. This will give you a flavour:

" And now she's back.  On his team.  They're going to have to work together, in close proximity.

But she's right.  It was a long time ago.  They've both moved on.  They are different people now.  It really won't be an issue."

Obviously, I wouldn't *dream* of revealing whether or not it becomes an issue, but I'm sure you get the idea.

It's very readable stuff, even if it's not exactly profound or original. I did think "oh, please!" at pretty regular intervals, but I still enjoyed it and was gripped by it.  It would make a good beach read and I'll probably read the next in the series, so I can recommend it.