A dark, psychological, crime procedural tale in which city people are kidnapped, murdered (one on line with a public vote) or hideously disfigured (eyes gouged out, fingers cut off, flesh scored) while DI Sean Corrigan and his team try their utmost to fathom the killer out. It’s Sean’s fourth case. He’s a troubled, not altogether likeable man, with Anna Revenni-Ceron, a psychological profiler, also assigned to this case. A story line to be revisited in future stories I feel. It’s good.
The fourth novel in the DI Sean Corrigan series by an ex-Met detective. Perfect for fans of Mark Billingham, Peter James and Stuart MacBride. A man who calls himself 'The Jackdaw' has been abducting financial sector workers from the City of London. Within hours of disappearing, the victims appear alongside a masked man on the internet, bound to a chair in a barren room. He believes they must be punished for crimes of greed and incompetence that led to the banking crisis and the suffering of millions of ordinary working people. The victims' crimes are broadcast to the watching thousands who decide the verdict - a click on the like icon for a vote of guilty; a click on the dislike icon for a vote of not guilty. Once the jury has decided, The Jackdaw will be the judge and executioner. DI Sean Corrigan and his Special Investigations Unit immediately inherit the case, and come under political pressure to solve it quickly. But as The Jackdaw's popularity grows, Sean realizes he's hunting a clever and elusive adversary - one who won't stop until his mission is complete.
Praise for Luke Delaney: 'A striking debut from a former Murder Squad Detective, Delaney is not his real name, but there is no doubt about his inside knowledge and ability to convey it Daily Mail
'A confident, aggressive and very promising debut by a former Met detective' The Times
'An authentic voice on how the police operate with a stone-cold killer striking randomly around London ... scary authenticity' The Sun
Author
About Luke Delaney
Luke Delaney joined the Metropolitan Police Service in the late 1980s and his first posting was to an inner city area of South East London notorious for high levels of crime and extreme violence. He was later asked to join the CID where he investigated murders ranging from those committed by fledgling serial killers to gangland assassinations.
Why I wrote Cold Killing, by Luke Delaney... 'I had an unbelievable sixteen years in the Police, the vast majority of which was spent in the CID, and loved every minute of it. But eventually the low pay and difficult working conditions drove me to resign, and I decided to fulfil a lifelong ambition to write a novel. My dad always said the great novelists write about what they know – so it was always going to be a crime novel from me.
With Cold Killing I wanted to write something that accurately portrayed the atmosphere of a murder investigation, while having the scope and pace of a contemporary American crime thriller. I also really wanted the main police protagonist to have a believable dark side that he uses as a tool to help track down the killers he hunts, and so DI Sean Corrigan came to be. Along with his team of detectives, he faces real-life police problems, such as dealing with dilapidated equipment and working from uncomfortable, crowded offices, instead of the high-tech, super-modern places you seen on TV. The book also seeks to show the pressures the detectives are constantly under: from time, their seniors, the media and public. During an investigation, time is always the enemy…'