Scratch Deeper

January 7, 2013
This run-of-the-mill first in a new crime series from Simms (Cut Adrift and five other Jon Spicer mysteries) introduces Det. Constable Iona Khan, recently promoted to the Greater Manchester Police Counter Terrorism Unit. In addition to putting up with hostility from her new colleagues, Iona must handle an undesirable assignment involving the Sub-Urban Explorers, a group dedicated to investigating the city’s many tunnels. An unidentified “lightly tanned gentleman” (i.e., a man who appears to be Middle Eastern) has approached the explorers about joining their group. He has expressed an interest in the area below Manchester’s main convention center, where the Labor Party is planning to hold a conference. Among those attending will be two former prime ministers—Tony Blair and Gordon Brown—along with Labor’s new leader and former U.S. president Bill Clinton. Will Iona be able to thwart a possible terrorist plot? Those expecting no surprises will be the least disappointed.

February 1, 2013
A lowly Detective Constable newly appointed to the Greater Manchester Police Force's Counter Terrorism Unit follows her unpromising assignment to a nest of deadly terrorists. Sgt. Jim Stephens, her ex-colleague and ex-lover, thinks Iona Khan got the plum assignment over him because of her skin tone. Iona, half-Scottish, half-Afghan, is determined to prove him wrong. Even though her introduction to her new position is the most routine chore imaginable--checking out the identity of a young foreigner who evidently used a false identity in cozying up to the Sub-Urban Explorers, a raffish group of amateurs who spend their spare time in the extensive network of tunnels beneath Manchester--she does her level best both to collect any evidence that might identify the man who calls himself Muttiah and to follow any leads that indicate he may be trouble. Iona succeeds so well in tying her quarry to both the murder of Law Lord Reginald Appleton in far-off Mauritius and the upcoming Labour Party convention in Manchester that she's soon seeing threats everywhere. Jim is duly impressed. Not so for Supt. Paul Wallace, her boss at the unit, who waxes increasingly impatient at Iona's independent streak. The day of the convention dawns to reveal an unexpected speaker whose presence will raise the stakes for everyone involved. Simms (Cut Adrift, 2011, etc.) launches a new series with an appealing heroine whose every move, so surprising to her and her boss, seems eminently predictable by genre fans.

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January 1, 2013
What seems a routine task lands Detective Constable Iona Khan in the midst of a crucial operation without support from colleagues. Just selected to the Manchester Counterterrorism Unit, Khan (half Scottish, half Pakistani) follows a tip from a secretive group that explores tunnels under the city about someone using fake ID. Turns out the man in question is from Mauritius with a new degree in chemical engineering and has been seen with his cousin, who's suspected of brutally murdering a former British law lord in Mauritius. With the high-level Labour Party conference about to begin in Manchester, Khan reports her suspicions about a terrorist plot only to have them ignored by Superintendent Paul Wallace, her cruel and racially biased boss. Fortunately, Khan's former boyfriend, Sergeant Jim Stephens, of the Manchester PD, who knows Wallace all too well from army service, believes her and has her back. Simms, author of the DI Jon Spicer series, skillfully builds tension in this procedural featuring an appealing protagonist, a persevering biracial woman in a man's world.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)