Into Dust [Kindle Edition]

I've recently been going through a detective/crime novel phase and having read Into Darkness (the first book by Jonathan Lewis) I picked up Into Dust as soon as it was out. The dramatic beginning saw that I was instantly gripped by the story, and the solidity of the main characters kept me gripped. In fact, I stuggled to put it down - even walking through the tube station and down the street still reading on my way home from work!

The twists and turns of the narrative kept me guessing but felt natural and I had the feeling that I had almost worked them out for myself (by far the most satisfying way for a detective/crime novel to go in my opinion). None of those illogical or unbelievable twists for the sake of "having a good twist" in this book!

The details of life in Camp Bastion and Afghanistan (as well as the Brecon Beacons) root the story firmly in reality and add an informative and itellectual side to the book. This, as well as the quality of the writing in the book, takes it firmly out of my "trashy" crime novel section of the bookcase and into the real books section!!

The main characters - Ned, Kate, Fatso, Extra Bilge - are all thoroughly likeable and realistic. The characters have just enough flaws to make them human without overloading them with so much emotional or psychological baggage as to make them cumbersome or annoying!

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good detective novel, appreciates a good storyline and solid and realistic characters and likes to feel they may have just learnt a little something about the world whilst reading a throughly good book.

Jonathan Lewis returns to the crime scene with the second Bale and Baker novel (the first being Into Darkness.) What Lewis does well is present the reader with a couple of credible lead characters that they want to get to know as well as hang around. For me that's key to any title.

Add to this some great prose, cracking pace as well as some top notch twists that keep you glued to the end and it was a story that I really enjoyed. I look forward to seeing what Jonathan comes up with next.

In Jonathan Lewis's second novel, Ned Bale, Scotland Yard's cleverest detective, is landed with a murder which rapidly turns out to be more of an intrigue. From the outset of this fast-paced thriller, we are sent on the wrong track. Ned sees the Minister of Defence blown up outside his Welsh weekend home by an IED which leaves clues of its Afghan origin. But has it been placed by a jihadi, a disgruntled squaddie (as the secret service suggests), or is there a more complicated explanation? And what in the world is Ned to make of the fragment containing the fingerprint of his former colleague and lover, the gorgeous "Dog Tart", Kate Baker, now on tour in Afghanistan sniffing out unexploded bombs? Lewis has a wonderful eye for detail - the specification of the bomber's get-away vehicle; a tense episode in which Kate defuses a bomb while Ned observes from the ops centre; the paraphernalia of Afghan army bases, hurly-burly of its cities and beauty of its countryside; as well as a keen ear for language - the secret poetry of Afghan women and the interior ambiguities of the novel's key characters. And at the story's climax, Lewis's taut plotting brings Bale and Baker to a bad place where they must find their way through treachery of every kind - intimate, military and political.