Bad Cops: A Henry Christie Thriller

Oldham’s hard-hitting 25th police thriller featuring Det. Supt. Henry Christie of the Lancashire Constabulary’s Force Major Investigation Team (after 2017’s Bad Blood) finds Henry at home recovering from a gunshot wound. Minutes after he rips the bandage off his still oozing shoulder, he hears a knock on the door. Chief constables Robert Fanshaw-Bayley, his boss at the Lancashire police department, and John Burnham, of the Central Yorkshire Police, have come to ask Henry to apply his analytical skills to reviewing two unsolved murder cases in Yorkshire. It should be a low stress task; no rough and tumble required. Less than 24 hours after Henry accepts the job, Burnham is found murdered, and someone pushes Henry down a flight of stone stairs. Are these incidents connected with the two crimes he’s investigating? You bet they are. Oldham dishes up some genuinely gruesome baddies. The fun is not in figuring out whodunit—the reader knows that from the start—but rather in discovering how deep the corruption runs and how these vile, villainous cops get their comeuppance. (Apr.)