His boss, Howard Keen, orders a hit on three men he describes as drug lords, but are actually two customs agents and an accountant. Dennis doesn’t discover the deception until after completing his assignment. He complains to Keen who admits he lied but alleges the men were bent nonetheless. Careful though he had been to carry out the shootings on a rainy night in a deserted car park, Dennis realizes a young woman has seen him. He knows he should have shot the witness as well, but she was an innocent bystander, and he hopes that she hasn’t seen him clearly enough to provide adequate information to the police.

Dennis has little time to ponder the potential problems the ill-fated murders have created. He is assigned to the case of a young woman who has been brutally stabbed to death. The sixteen-year-old victim is from a well-to-do family, who has forsaken her family in favor of life as a prostitute to support her drug habit. All of her acquaintances describe her as an unpleasant woman whose major focus was herself. When this information surfaces and the department is swamped by a mass of other crimes, Dennis is ordered to abandon the case, since the life of a prostitute is not worth much in political polls and there is to be an election soon. This attitude offends Dennis who decides to keep investigating on his own.

Dennis has always been considered a renegade, but has managed to survive in his job because his immediate superior, Detective Inspector Karl Welland, thinks along the same lines and covers for him. However, Welland has been diagnosed with cancer and has been replaced by a much more political animal. When a drawing of the custom agents’ killer is published in the paper that bares a striking resemblance to Dennis, he realizes his days as a cop are numbered though his passion to solve the case he was to abandon has not abated. Now time and resources are at a premium.

In his first novel, Simon Kernick has created an engaging character in Dennis Milne. With his own definition of ethics and morality, Dennis has no qualms about bucking the judicial system when it doesn’t seem to be providing protection and justice for those who need it. He sees too clearly the flaws in the system and seeks, through maverick means, to deal with its shortcomings. It is a shame that the system, in the end, gets the best of him.

It is an accurate portrayal of life where the good guys do not always win. While probably accurate in his descriptions of the lives of prostitutes, drug addicts, and others that inhabit the underbelly of society, the author makes no attempt to clean up or gloss over the language or activities of such people. The effect is startling and brutal. The graphic descriptions of violent deaths are no for the faint of heart or stomach. Those readers that like the messy stuff to occur offstage would be advised to give this one a pass. Those that thrive on realistic fiction will find it engrossing.

There is a mystery albeit an unconventional one. The reader is present when Dennis kills the customs agents, but the person accountable for the stabbing death of the young prostitute who becomes Dennis’ goal provides plenty of intrigue and action. The subsequent murders of persons obviously related to the case make Dennis’ task all that much more difficult. What is, perhaps, the most interesting facet of this story is the ambiguity of the ending. Was justice really served? Has Dennis really had to sacrifice his principles as well as his career because of his poor judgment in murdering three men? Hopefully Mr. Kernick will answer these questions in future volumes.

--Andy Plonka