What I’m Reading: Eva Dolan

Eva Dolan is the author of Long Way Home and Tell No Tales, the first two novels in a major new crime series featuring Zigic & Ferreira of the Peterborough Hate Crimes Unit.

We all know that when crime authors aren’t writing, they’re probably reading! We asked Eva to tell us about what she’s currently reading and what she loves about it.

 
Over to Eva:

I’ve been a huge fan of James Oswald ever since I picked up his first DI McLean novel as a self-published Kindle freebie back in 2012. Since then his bold blending of supernatural themes into a traditional police procedural has taken this series from indie phenomenon to the Sunday Times bestseller list.

Prayer for the Dead is the fifth outing for DI Tony McLean, a fiercely rational copper who keeps finding himself pitted against forces which often defy logical explanation. This time around he’s confronted with the corpse of a missing journalist, discovered in a sealed network of caves underneath Edinburgh, the body carefully staged in a bizarre purification ritual. Forensic evidence is thin on the ground and McLean is forced to work with an old enemy, the fabulously awful hack Dalgleish, to uncover what her murdered colleague was investigating. Add in dodgy developers, pole-climbing colleagues and fan favourite transvestite medium Madame Rose, whose shadowy enemies threaten to come uncomfortably close to home for McLean.

As with earlier instalments, Prayer for the Dead is a complex yarn, expertly constructed and utterly gripping; the supernatural elements are lightly done and remain always slightly ambiguous, spinning around the core of a solid police procedural. McLean is an appealing protagonist, sceptical and humane – one for readers who’d rather spend time with a ‘white knight’ than loose a cannon – and his team are developing nicely as the series progresses.

James Oswald is one of those authors I know I’m in safe hands with. Always reliably entertaining and disturbing, I start his books in full knowledge that I’ll be captivated into the wee hours. If you’re a fan of Mark Billingham or Stuart MacBride (who gives his name to McLean’s DC) then add Prayer for the Dead to your wish list right now.

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A huge thank you to Eva Dolan for her time! Eva’s second novel, Tell No Tales, is out now in hardback and sees Detectives Zigic and Ferreira investigating a hit-and-run that leaves two migrant workers dead and a series of horrific killings, seemingly with a Neo-Nazi motivation.