Someone kicked and battered ex-navy prison officer Coughlin until he choked to death on his own vomit--he was not a likable man and part of the trouble for the investigative team is that there are almost too many leads. As prison officer, Coughlin made it his business to mock and humiliate anyone who claimed to be innocent, for example, several of the investigators believe they need look no further than his principal victim. Coughlin adopted a brutally aggressive persona in Internet chat rooms and was hated by his shipmates for being a bully and a rapist--yet there were people who loved him in spite of his awfulness.

This is an intelligent thriller because it remembers that no-one is all of a simple piece--most of the police in Hurley's cast, even his viewpoint figure Faraday, are only marginally less flawed than the villains. --Roz Kaveney

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Freshly promoted to the elite Major Crimes Unit Faraday is thrown into the deep end with the investigation into the murder of prison officer Paul Coughlin. Was the violent Coughlin killed by a recently released con he brutalised in prison? Or is his death a legacy of a wider, more savage violence from twenty years before? Coughlin was a petty officer in the Royal Navy. He served on HMS Accolade, a Type 21 frigate sunk during the Falklands War with the loss of 19 men. Could it be that that tragedy has hidden the evidence of a crime that has waited 20 years to be avenged? Portsmouth, the Royal Navy's major south coast base, has thrived on the riches that war brings but it has also suffered; a city and its people living with the long shadows of the terrible emotional and physical price of conflict. Hurley focusses on Portsmouth's ambiguious relationship with the Royal Navy and, as Faraday attempts to penetrate the wall of silence thrown up by the Navy, presents a further rivetting chapter in the life of his uniquely appealing hero.

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