Blackpool, the Sands Hotel. Two men lie dead in adjacent rooms, both seemingly executed by a single shot to the head. One of them has ties to local organised crime – the other is just an accountant. It seems impossible for there to be a reason to for there to be a hit called out on both of them. It seems that there was no reason for the two victims to be in adjacent rooms. It’s a puzzle to perplex the finest of police detectives. And Blackpool doesn’t have that.

What it does have is DS Declan Miller. A detective with an amazing skill at annoying his colleagues. A man who is still grieving his wife, murdered only a couple of months previously, a case that is unsolved and making no progress. But he’s also possibly the only man who can dance his way to the truth…

After eighteen novels featuring Tom Thorne, and a fair few standalones, The Last Dance is the first in a new series from Mark Billingham featuring Declan Miller. And it comes at a really annoying time. I’m off on holiday tomorrow, and I’ve just finished this book, so I want to write this review, but I’m going to have to be quick. But I really don’t want to write this quickly.

You see, I want to praise so much about this book. I want to bang on about how wonderful a character Declan Miller is. I want to give you details on the supporting cast (especially Sara “Posh Gravy” Xiu). I want to talk about how a book where the overwhelming emotion driving things is grief can be so joyful. It’s a marvellous book, and it’s worth praising how Billingham can fill that page count for a book with a fairly straightforward central mystery without it ever feeling remotely padded. It’s a marvellous read, simply marvellous.

So I’ll just leave it there. As I said with The Vanishing Act, I’ve had trouble concentrating on reading recently. Well, the double bill of Sarah Ward and Mark Billingham have hopefully kicked that problem into touch. This is a marvellous read, and I’ll be hunting down a copy of the recently released second book, The Wrong Hands, very soon.