The Shout by Stephen Leather, one of my favourite authors, is a new standalone thriller which sees a firefighter looking for a careful and meticulous murderer.
29-year-old Vicky Lewis is a crew manager with the London Fire Brigade (LFB), destined for great things and already a hero. When on a shout for a fire in an abandoned building she is made aware of people still inside and enters to save a man’s life, but while she saves him she leaves with catastrophic life changing injuries.
6 months after the accident and recovery she is fit for work and ready to go back but politics get in the way and she is transferred to the Fire Investigation Unit (FIU) and assigned to Des Farmer, aka The Grouch!
The Grouch in running his own off-the-books investigation into the apparent murders of blonde woman that have been covered up with fires made to look like accidents. When Vicky stumbles across his investigation she decides to help him in his quest, which could have some very dangerous consequences.
Overall, I love The Shout – I think it is one of the best books written by Stephen Leather. It is very fast flowing and hits the ground running from the first page. It is exciting, thrilling with humour in the right places and an excellent story told by a superb storyteller.
It seems to be extremely well researched with how fires start and spread along with how they are put out and then investigated and makes it great reading.
The characters are excellent and very believable, with The Grouch being my favourite – he is grumpy, rude, cantankerous, sexist but very likeable.
The Shout keeps you on the edge of your seat and the 400-odd pages just fly by. It is a scorching-hot read that I can highly recommend.
Rating: 5/5
RRP: £14.99 (Hardback) / £8.99 (Paperback) / £4.99 (Kindle)
Available to buy from Amazon here. For more information about Stephen Leather and his books visit www.stephenleather.com.
