Eight social media influencers were taking part in a convention in the Scottish Highlands, but when they leave, they all take the same minibus – and promptly vanish without trace. No one has any idea where they are – until the livestream starts…

As DCI Jack Logan and his team watch in horror, the mastermind behind the kidnappings pits their victims against each other, live on the internet. But Logan is receiving threats of his own, threats that could end not just his career but everything he holds dear…

Well, this is an interesting one. It’s the twentieth DCI Logan novel – I suppose Tartan Noir is the genre, but that’s a pretty wide umbrella to be honest – and it’s the first one that I’ve read.

It’s an interesting premise and plot structure. The idea of a DIY Squid Game has been done before – let’s face it, every plot has – but normally we find ourselves sitting on the shoulder of the suffering contestants, whereas Kirk chooses not to do that, but rather focus almost all of the action in the police incident room and the direct threat to Logan’s life.

There’s also what appears at first to be an odd choice, namely that the villain behind things is somehow targeting Logan with secrets from his past. While there is a whodunnit element to it, this is much more in the thriller genre.

I did find it hard to get into it for quite a while though, as it is Book Twenty in the series and I felt that I was missing a lot of the background on Logan and his team. I wasn’t sure how much of Logan’s past misadventures were detailed on paper or whether they are being revealed here for the first time. Similarly, the book opens with the clean-up of a case that might have been from the previous book, which I presume must end in a cliffhanger, or was brand new. Just couldn’t tell and it took a while for me to settle into the book because of it.

All in all, it’s a well-written slice of Tartan Noir with a good supporting cast of characters but I felt as a late-comer, I was missing enough involvement in the background to be completely hooked in. Pretty sure fans of the series will love it, and I’m intrigued enough to go back to the beginning at some point in the future.