When a nighthawker on the hunt for antiquities instead uncovers the body of a foreign student, Detective Adam Tyler is pulled into a serpentine mystery of dangerous secrets, precious finds, and illegal dealings.
You are a trespasser. You are a thief. You are a Nighthawker.
Under the dark cover of night, a figure climbs over the wall of the Botanical Garden with a bag and a metal detector. It’s a dicey location in the populous city center, but they’re on the hunt–and while most of what they find will be worthless, it takes only one big reward to justify the risk. Only this time, the nighthawker unearths a body. . . .
Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler and his newly promoted protégé, Detective Constable Amina Rabbani, are officially in charge of Cold Case Reviews. But with shrinking budgets and manpower in the department, both are shunted onto the murder investigation–and when the victim is identified as a Chinese national from a wealthy family, in the UK on a student visa, the case takes on new urgency to prevent an international incident.
As Tyler and Rabbani dig further into the victim’s life, it’s becomes clear there’s more to her studies and relationships than meets the eye, and that the original investigation into her disappearance was shoddy at best. Meanwhile, someone else is watching these events . . . someone who knew the victim, and might hold the key to what happened the night she vanished.
Russ Thomas grew up in the 80s reading anything he could get his hands on, writing stories, watching television, and playing videogames: in short, anything that avoided the Great Outdoors. After a few ‘proper’ jobs, he discovered the joys of bookselling, where he could talk to people about books all day. Now a full-time writer, he also teaches creative writing classes and mentors new authors.
My thoughts: I’m not sure I’d be out creeping around at night, even if there was treasure, but that’s how a dead woman’s body is discovered in Sheffield’s Botanical Gardens. Buried in a shallow grave, she is a Chinese student with a politically connected father and an interest in rare orchids.
As Tyler and the newly promoted Mina Rabbani start to work the case, Tyler’s secret investigation into Superintendent Stevens is distracting him from the case and leaving Mina doing all the legwork.
That case is stepping up and Tyler and Doggett find new details emerging about Stevens and his cronies that need following up and could put people in danger.
The new case turns out to have links with the secret investigation which pull them in closer to Stevens’ many secrets.
But they still need to unravel the body in the border, what do the gold coins found with the corpse mean? Who left them there?
A fascinating, gripping thriller with a shocking ending.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 