Review: A Deadly Flame

A Deadly Flame by Doug Sinclair
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

DS Malkie McCulloch's third outing, this time for a fire at a whisky bonded warehouse where a dead body was found in one of the offices and A firefighter lost his life. There are so many variables, was the fire arson? Was the firefighter's equipment faulty? Was the person dead before the fire was started? Did they start the fire? Why did one of the fire-fighters take the dead firefighters breathing apparatus away in contravention of standard procedure? Why was one firefighter shouting at another?

This was a gripping detective story, although the prologue made it obvious (to me) what had happened (although not necessarily why). However, ... I feel that in his attempts to create some personal lives for Malkie and Steph outside the cases Doug Sinclair draws with a very thick pen and is repetitious, very repetitious, to the point where, frankly, I no longer believed in the storyline. (view spoiler)[Steph has discovered that her she was a product of rape, by her step-father Dean's friend, a man she grew up calling 'uncle'. Now the timelines seemed off to me. Steph originally thought she was a last minute oversight from her mother's first husband, then it seems she was raped by her second husband's best friend Barry. But then why would she continue to happily allow him to visit the house and play with his biological daughter? And it also says her mother's attitude to Barry changed and she no longer wanted him around - why if the rape happened years earlier? Also Steph seems to have taken the news very, very badly. If she sobs into her Kahlua once about Barry and his rapist genes polluting her body she does it five or six times. (hide spoiler)]

I also find Doug Sinclair's depiction of women a bit problematic, you might argue that no-one comes out of this looking good and that would be a fair point, but I just feel that one way or another they are all victims. I said with the first book that maybe these were too dark and tortured for me and this has reinforced that view.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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