The Reckoning by Jane Casey

OK, so I feel like I have been on real roll with my reading lately.  Do you ever have those times when it seems like every book you pick up is just the right one for that moment?  I don't get that experience all the time, but lately?  Yes, yes, yes!

The Reckoning is the second book in Jane Casey's DC Maeve Kerrigan series.  The first book is The Burning and I read it last summer.  And the fifth book, The Kill, will be published later this year.  I have lots of good reading to come.  Back to The Reckoning - Maeve Kerrigan is one of the junior members of Superintendent Godley's crime squad.  She is ambitious and really keen to prove that she, a woman, is a detective worthy of her job.  Sometimes it kind of seems like that theme of misogyny has been done over and over, but I suspect that it is more true to life than we would like to consider.

Three men have been killed in terrible ways.  The thing that ties them all together is that they were convicted sex offenders.  Some wonder why the police would even need to care that much.  Maybe the killings are a favor to society.  Maeve feels that they are victims regardless and it's up to the cops to catch the murderer.  She has a new quasi-partner to work with, DI Josh Derwent, an interesting man to say the least.  And she is not at all sure she wants to be working with the abrasive inspector.

Nevertheless, DI Derwent and DC Kerrigan are able to figure out what was behind the awful killings and then they realize that this case has much more at stake.  A young teenager is missing.  Someone close is being stalked, without her knowledge.  There might be a leak in their squad room to the complicated network responsible for crime after crime.  And Maeve discovers that she has a knack for detecting and putting the pieces together in the right order.  Then things really get dicey and scary.

I was pleased to get to know Maeve and her cohorts better.  There is a new female detective that has joined the squad and so Maeve is not alone in her gender anymore.  Her colleagues are becoming more familiar and DI Derwent seems like he will be a good match for Maeve, regardless of her personal dislike of him.  There are depths there.  I can feel it.

Every time I thought that we had learned all there was to know and the book would come to an end, I'd realize that I had more to go.  The intricacies of the storyline were many.  And I totally enjoyed that.  There were funny parts and breathless parts.  A good crime thriller all around.  I look forward to the next in the series, The Last Girl, and hope to read it soon.  This is a series that I can recommend if you like British cop books.  Me, I love them.