The Missing Husband

AC Corrigan is worried about the increase of Russian mobsters in London. He has an inside informer who briefs him that there will be a meeting to decide on a supreme leader. This Vor will have a Watcher who coordinates the day to day running of the business. That man is rumoured to be Arkady Belanov, an old adversary of Hanlon and Demirel. When this mole goes missing, the AC asks Enver Demirel to look discretely into this case. Hanlon has been banished to Slough in Thames Valley on the missing persons department. She’s visited by Oksana Taverner. Her husband is missing and most likely dead because he reported to Corrigan about the Russian mob. She’s unwilling to take this case but the woman insists and tells her that she suspects Belanov to be behind the murder. Unaware of it, Hanlon and Enver work the same case again from different angles. This is the third book in this series and builds further on the events from the previous books. I advise reading those first. If you choose to, you can read this on its own but you’ll miss out on the background story. Hanlon is still riddled with guilt about the coma of her friend and colleague Mark. The family wants to pull the plug but she wants him to undergo an expensive and not NHS funded risky operation that might reverse this coma. But she lacks those funds as well. We also discover her sexual orientation at long last, not that it matters but I was curious. Enver has reached a dead point in his relationship with Melinda Huss because neither one dares to confess their true feelings and needs. They’re both in love but fear rejection because they’ve both got a bad self-image. That’s something that I appreciate a lot. The protagonists in this series are not the usual poster-boys and supermodels that we encounter so often in similar series, be it on tv or in books. Unknown to DCI Hanlon and DI Demirel, Arkady Belanov and his enforcer Dimitri haven’t got over their humiliation by them and are totally obsessed with revenge. Hanlon enlists a number of unlikely allies in this book. There’s a very diverse cast this time, a ‘Chinaman’ hitman, an FSB officer, the Anderson crime family, Russian mobsters and also corrupt policemen As in the other books, the author voices a number of legitimate concerns about a number of issues. He asks us why the committees on prostitution are full of so-called academic specialists instead of working girls from the shop floor? A lot of people die in horrible ways and there’s a lot of violence. It all seems to be excusable in the circumstances but I doubt if the public would be happy with a similar way of policing in reality. To be honest, the bosses in the book aren’t happy with her neither. I had a continuity problem about the time that Melinda is waiting in Hanlon’s flat but she doesn’t seem to return and later on they’re both going along with their usual work. It just doesn’t feel right. The story is interesting and suspenseful with (gun)fights and chases that would make a very good action thriller on the big screen. I thank Netgalley and Boldwood Books for the free ARC they provided and this is my honest and unbiased review of it.