Nighthawking

Starred review from December 7, 2020
The discovery of a young woman’s body buried in the sprawling Botanical Gardens of Sheffield, England, drives Thomas’s outstanding sequel to 2020’s Firewatching, which introduced Det. Sgt. Adam Tyler. The victim—a Chinese national studying botany at the local university—was found with ancient Roman coins on her eyes, historically valuable artifacts worth a lot of money. Tyler, struggling to get the wreckage of his personal life in order and still obsessed about finding out the truth of his father’s alleged suicide, offers little help as the brunt of the work falls to Tyler’s newly promoted protégé, Det. Constable Mina Rabbani, who realizes quickly that the case involves much more than a simple buried body. Thomas adeptly develops his diverse cast, but the novel’s real power lies in its intricate structure—the mystery surrounding the body is impressively deep, the various levels of tension are relentless, and every chapter ends with a narrative punch to the face. This police procedural is virtually unputdownable. Agent: Sara Manning, Bent Agency.

December 1, 2020
The dead girl's body is discovered by the chanciest of chances. A detectorist--someone who sweeps the ground with a metal detector--is scanning a botanical garden in Sheffield, England, when he encounters the corpse. What happens then? Nothing much. That's the mystery inside this fitfully engaging engaging tale. When the two leads, Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler and his prot�g�, Detective Constable Amina Rabbani, are handed the cold case, their questions only provoke more questions. Why was the first detective on the case suspended? Why is the girl's wealthy, powerful father uninterested in her awful fate? Why was Tyler warned anonymously to ""stay away from the girl in the garden""? The answers come slowly in an easygoing narrative that will frustrate readers looking for harder edges. They're advised to relax into the amiable tale and savor the vignettes along the way, like the encounters with a full-of-himself professor and a raffish thief or two, while marveling at the findings of those fellows with the metal detectors. Turns out valuable relics from the Roman occupation of Britain are one only one twist of your metal detector away.

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December 4, 2020

When a nighthawker, a person who hunts for treasure illegally, is using a metal detector on the grounds of the Botanical Gardens in Sheffield, England, he uncovers a body. Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler and Detective Constable Amina Rabbani are yanked off the Cold Case Review Unit to help with the murder investigation. Mina is furious that the men she works with seem to disappear while she perseveres until the victim is identified as Chi, aka Li Qiang, a Chinese national in England on a student visa who had been reported missing. But why does her body have two valuable golden Roman coins in her eye sockets? While Mina plugs away, Adam is sidetracked by the investigation of the death of his father, a police officer said to have died by suicide years earlier. Another officer insists it was murder, and a powerful local gangster hints he has evidence. The murder investigation involving Chi, the death of a nighthawker, and Adam's case collide, leading to a dramatic, somewhat implausible conclusion. VERDICT The sequel to Firewatching is a confusing, complex book that culminates in a cliff-hanger. Even readers of the previous book will have a difficult time connecting the story line from the previous novel.--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2021
DS Adam Tyler investigates a baffling murder. In this densely plotted novel, Tyler, nominally a cold case investigator, is recruited to help look into the death of a woman whose body is discovered in the Sheffield Botanical Garden. The reader sees a "nighthawker," illegally prospecting for treasure with a metal detector, unearth her hand and then flee, and in the morning, garden employees find it aboveground. The nighthawkers are the loosely connected members of a detectorist club prepared to break the law in the pursuit of treasure, after hours and on private property, and when the novel opens they have already explored an archaeological site and uncovered a cache of rare gold Roman coins. When the rest of the body is disinterred by the authorities, two of these coins are found on the woman's eyes; the mystery of her death and why the coins are there forms the backbone of the plot. But of course there are complications. The dead woman is Chinese, a student at Sheffield University, and she may or may not have been involved in the illegal export of plants; one of the nighthawkers was a close friend of hers; Tyler is warned off the case, first by an anonymous note and then by a beating; Sheffield's top hoodlum makes an apparently unconnected appearance, complicating Tyler's life; and Tyler's prot�g�, Mina Rabbani, suffers some angst-y moments. Readers familiar with Tyler and Rabbani will be glad to see them back, and though Tyler's openly gay identity is not a strong element of this episode, he still must negotiate moments of homophobia. The assorted nighthawkers, secondary suspects, and colleagues both true and dubious are all well drawn and mostly believable, though their many connections may seem a bit contrived. A satisfying, intricate thriller.

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