Never judge a book by its back cover. For a couple of years now, Chris Simms' Manchester-based police procedurals have been dropping on the doormat with some regularity. For two years I had ignored them.
Something put me off, and I'm not quite sure what. Perhaps it was Manchester itself. A City I don't really know, feel no affinity for and was in no great hurry to familiarise myself with. For whatever reason, Simms' books joined the to read pile, but never quite made it to the top.
All of which is a great pity, because I could have discovered Chris Simms two years ago, and I would not now be playing catch up with his back catalogue.
And of course what I already knew was that given great writing and a strong plot, location doesn't necessarily matter one bit whether it's Manchester, Moscow or Manila. And so it is with Hell's Fire, a cracking procedural exploring some of the darker fringes of society where the ethically-challenged and greedy prey on the weak, needy and lonely.
Hell's Fire focuses on DI Jon Spicer's investigation into a series of church torchings which take a turn for the worse when a burnt corpse is found in the ruins. Satanic symbols found at the scene lead the Major Incident Team into an investigation which narrows down on a thriving occult scene around Manchester, and most notably a vampiric rock band and a "college" offering courses in sprituality and alternative religious systems.
The book spends a long time dwelling on religious issues. Spicer, a non-believer brought up in a strict religious household, finds himself refereeing an ongoing dispute between his devout mother and his tearaway younger sister who has joined a religion focused on human alignment with the natural world, and who is wrapped up in affairs at the dodgy college. And as the story progresses the dark secret of Spicer's sister's alienation from the church emerges to further complicate matters for the detective.
At the same time the attacks on the churches bring friction between established religion and its alternatives before new killings raise the stakes for all involved, and it becomes increasingly unclear which set is killing in homage to their own belief systems.
What works brilliantly here is the portrayal of the problems that come with uncompromising conviction allied to a willingness to follow beliefs with action, action that might be called terrorism in another context.
Simms has a gift for writing people that allows him to manage this process. Spicer is everyman, a father and a husband with money worries and family problems like the rest of us. His sister is at once idealistic and angry, independent and desperately in need of society. Perhaps it is no coincidence that only Rick Saville, Spicer's gay partner, seems assured and at ease with himself.
And then beyond the characterisation, or perhaps through it, there is a great story: dark and compelling, and one that keeps the reader guessing right up to a gruesome but satisfying finale.
Simms is very good, and I only wish I had discovered that two years ago.