#firewatching

he saw his dad’s “suicide” when he was fifteen. his brother used to take him (teenaged child traumatised by their father’s death) to drug dens. he’s deeply attached to his godmother (police officer) and his dad’s friend/substitute dad (also a police officer) and he nearly gets fired in the first book. he loses two boyfriends in two books. he sucks absolute shit at everything <333

like, the first time we see him he’s considering buying the house he investigated a murder in. boy get therapy

i know for a fact that he knows nothing about pop culture i can just sense it in my soul

anyway he keeps trying to adopt people. constable mina rabbini the mob boss’ son jn book 2 possibly his niece in book 3…… he’s like anti police while being a cop which is so funny. he is everything to me. he’s even gay. he once looked a mob boss in the eye and went “did you kill my dad” like BOY 😭😭

Overall I liked it, enough to go on and buy the second one anyway. I've never actually read a crime thriller before but I had been given it for christmas and thought I would give it a go.

It mostly follows 4 different perspectives. Each chapter is laid out as a day during the investigation and at the start of each there is a blog entry from an arsonist.

The most prominent perspective is of course DS Adam Tyler as he trys to solve a murder six years after it took place.

Adam doesn't really work well with others but is assigned to work with DI Doggett and his team to investigate the murder. I enjoyed Adam’s character, he is pretty clueless as to what other people are thinking and feeling socially and it felt pretty relatable. And also kind of funny to read the contrast to how observant he is during an investigation. Adam is also gay and deals with a fair amount of homophobia from other members of the police force, to me it felt like it was dealt with well and in a way that doesn't bog down the story but works within the narrative to be realistic.

There are also some parts following Constable Rabbini, a young police constable, who is on the team working the investigation, who wants to be a detective.

To me the most notable though was the perspective of Lily an elderly woman who lives near the murder scene with her partner Edna. Lily starts receiving black mail notes but can't remember what she did, only that it was something bad. Obviously this was pretty emotional to read but it was an interesting take rather than just following along the investigation alone.

Each book is pretty much a stand alone but continuing to follow DS Tyler. Russ Thomas is also working on a third book. 

Obviously this deals with some pretty dark and potentially triggering subject matter and I would recommend looking up trigger warnings for each beforehand.