The Shadow Step: One taken simultaneously by a pair of dancers facing the same direction, one of them behind and slightly shifted leftwards (‘in the shadow’)

It was a shadow step of sorts that left local minor villain Ezra Simmons dead in a lake in a park, with ex-squaddie Barry Chappie left to take the blame. Was there something more to the death? No, not really apart from the cavalcade of chaos that it initiated.

As DS Declan Miller and his colleagues seek a clever murderer, the local villainy are set on revenge for the death of Simmons, with Cheshite and his wobbly dachshund Ruby in their sights. But revenge soon explodes into an attack on one of the local crime families and a young man’s life is at stake – and only Declan Miller can save him. Oh dear…

There’s a line in the author’s comment at the back when Mark Billingham says that this is light relief following the trauma of the last Tom Thorne book, What The Night Brings, and he has a point. Miller is very good company, with a sense of humour that is certainly close to my own – there’s a couple of comments he made that had me laughing out loud, especially the Right Said Fred joke that a lot of people won’t get… but he’s not a clown. Inappropriate, yes, but there is a lot of positivity throughout this story of drug-dealing, drug-taking and an incontinent dachshund.

The reappearance of Declan’s dead wife Alex, who seemed to have vanished after the last book, is very welcome as it gives him a chance to honestly talk to himself and peel away some layers. His relationship with his partner, Xiu, is coming along nicely, especially the almost casual way he helps her out.

But the beating heart here is the ongoing story of Miller and his step-daughter, the drug addict Finn, which takes a massive step forward here, and the final scene of that thread was, I thought, very powerful.

Oh, and there’s an escalating crime story as well, that brings back some familiar faces from the previous books. In some ways, you could almost see The Last Dance series as a soap opera revolving around Miller, although with… no, actually there are probably lots of guns and drugs in soap operas too. It’s certainly not a mystery, apart from how long it takes the police to appreciate what happened to Simmons, but, you know what? I was having such a good time that I didn’t really care.

But given how much fun Billingham was clearly having writing this, I dread how dark things are going to be for Tom Thorne next time…

The Shadow Step is out this Thursday from Sphere in hardback and ebook. Many thanks to Penguin for the review e-copy.