‘Whatever It Takes’ by Heaton Wilson is a crime thriller set in Manchester in the North West of the U.K. Immediately this grabbed my attention as I am born and bred just outside Manchester and I adore books that are set in and around here.
We meet D.C.I Jane Birchfield, she is certainly having a tough time; her mum hardly speaks to her, her relationship is not going great and to top it off her mentor and boss is critically ill so she is covering his post and doing her own work at the same time. She finds herself heading up the most serious murder cases too.
Jamie Castleton is discovered dead, seemingly frozen in position at a computer in a grubby internet cafe in the Manchester suburb of Ashbridge.
Enquiries reveal he was a self-employed tech-consultant and a computer expert, so what was he doing in there? The more Jane and her team dig under the surface, the more the evidence points to one of Manchester’s biggest companies, Greaves, and its super-wealthy boss, Graeme Hargreaves.
This leads Jane into a sordid underworld, and a surprise twist in the investigation forces her to face up to an event in her past, that she has kept buried for 25 years.
Slowly, but surely, the net tightens around the suspects, but can she stay objective, and can she keep herself, her team, and her relationship, together, and bring the killer to justice? For Jane it has become a personal crusade, but in this race against time, there is far more at stake than she ever imagined.
I like Jane, she is rather a complex and intriguing woman. She has a past and we know it. A strong woman with way too much going on for comfort. I did get to know Jane really fast and the members of her team too. The death of Jamie Castleton gives Jane a case that will challenge her to the limit. Her dogged determination even with all her personal issues makes her a likeable character. I felt like I was with her I was that invested in her and the story.
Heaton Wilson’s descriptions of Manchester make me feel at home, I can envision these streets and places, he has brought the flavour of Manchester to the pages of this book. A crime thriller that felt like home from home to me and kept me reading far longer than I expected.
Thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources and Matador for the copy of the book.
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