DCI Billy McCartney first appeared in The Killing Pool, a wonderfully twisted slice of Scouse Noir. Disillusioned by his job and the world, he is drawn back into trouble by the arrival of a runaway on his doorstep. The waif's unexpected appearance reminds him of a disastrous drugs operation he was involved in Morocco two decades earlier when his female partner ended up dead and McCartney is compelled to revisit the past to deadly effect. Ferocious and idiosyncratic, this feels as if Elmore Leonard had been born in Liverpool and taken a wrong turn after taking a tab of Ecstasy. Dark and compelling stuff. ~ Maxim Jakubowski
DCI Billy McCartney has gone to ground, disillusioned with his job. When a runaway turns up on his doorstep, her story plunges Mac back to the summer of 1990, and one of his most traumatic cases. Ibiza - a joint venture with the Spanish serious crime agency. McCartney and his partner DS Millie Baker have been detailed to infiltrate the Liverpool-based drug gang responsible for a wave of ecstasy-related deaths. But their stakeout takes both Mac and Millie to the heart of a dark empire whose tentacles stretch from Ireland to Morocco, and whose activities include industrial-scale drug production - and terrorism. They're close to their big bust when Millie is abducted by the gang, and killed. McCartney never quite recovers from it. The waif who knocks on Mac's door twenty-four years later has escaped from those same captors; a dynasty of international dope dealers based high in the Moroccan Rif. What she tells McCartney blasts his apathy away, and sends him on a mission that goes far beyond law and order. This is his chance for redemption.
Kevin Sampson is the author of eight novels - Awaydays, Powder, Leisure, Outlaws, Clubland, Freshers, Starsare Stars and The Killing Pool - and a work of non-fiction, Extra Time. He lives and works in Liverpool.
