Marked Men

In Simms’s fine sequel to 2018’s Loose Tongues, Jordan Hughes, who has just finished serving more than a decade in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, is bent on taking revenge on those responsible, including Manchester, England, gang lord Anthony Brown. Two days after Hughes’s release, Det. Constable Sean Blake, and his partner, Det. Sgt. Magda Dragomir, investigate the death of Lee Goodwin, a ne’er-do-well who was found in a canal with his hands bound together by a plastic tie. Goodwin’s mother, who is remarkably unmoved by Lee’s death, points them to a friend of her son’s, Phil Nordern, but before Blake and Dragomir can track him down, Nordern’s body, also with its hands secured by plastic, turns up in a park lake. Chapters devoted to the police inquiry alternate with ones from Hughes’s perspective, heightening suspense as even more murders are committed. Simms does a good job of including developments in Blake’s personal life without having them dominate the plot. Fans of gritty police procedurals will be rewarded. [em](July) [/em]