Of course I’m going to read a new Michael Connelly book, and it’s interesting that he’s one of the relatively few authors still being published during lockdown, with so many spring books being pushed to the autumn.

While I’ve read everything Connelly has published in recent years, this is actually the first book featuring his investigative journalist Jack McEvoy that I’ve come across. We find McEvoy working for the website Fair Warning, specialising in consumer issues. But when he gets pulled over by a couple of detectives who are investigating the murder of a woman that he once had a single date with, he begins to get intrigued.

Before you know it, he’s got suspicions about whether the dead woman is the only victim, so unusual is the cause of death, and whether the fact that she submitted her DNA to one of those consumer DNA companies, has something to do with it.

As McEvoy digs, things get murkier.

As a former journalist, Connelly knows of what he writes. Indeed, Fair Warning is a real website, and its editor is the person named in the novel – often having to keep McEvoy on the straight and narrow, particularly in regard to him investigating something in which he is suspected of being involved in himself.

The issues covered in the book are real. Especially surrounding the regulation of DNA (there are few in the US), and the demands of small enterprising news sites that try to fill a void where newspapers are disappearing, but have to raise cash as well as do reporting.

Another very solid Connelly outing – and because he’s been busy, we’re due another novel later this autumn.