Washington Poe is enjoying something of a quiet life. He has quite the National Crime Agency and set up as a private detective – well, a “Gumshoe For Hire”, according to the sign on the door – with his best friend, Tilly Bradshaw, the horrifying cases that he’s dealt with are hopefully a thing of the past. The sign on the door seems to be putting potential clients off, so that’s a bonus.

And then Esmerée Blue stumbles through their door to hire them to find her mother. But this is far more than a missing persons enquiry. As Poe stumbles across a conspiracy stretching back years, his peace and quiet is about to be completely shattered. As Poe and Tilly step into the world of trafficking and pornography, they have no idea where the path they are on is going to take them. Or the scale of the enemy that they are about to make…

OK, I admit it, I went into this book convinced that M W Craven was trying to one-up Reginald Hill who once named the murderer in the very first sentence of the book, by naming the murderer in the title of the book. Thankfully my first thought was completely wrong – there is no character called Mark in the book.

This is the eighth Washington Poe novel – consistently the best series of thrillers currently being published. And I read a lot of very good books (and some less good ones).

This is another outstanding book. Funny at times – the section where the NCA visit Poe and Tilly’s office is laugh out loud hilarious – whereas some of the other sections are, shall we say, a tad darker. In fact, while not hitting the levels of The Mercy Chair, this is a pretty dark story. One of the many strengths of this book is that at pretty much no point in the story did I know where it was going. It’s got a surprise in almost every chapter, and the plot has a perfect balance between outlandish nastiness and complete plausibility.

Obviously, I’m not going to spoil anything here but this is my favourite book of the year so far – the only thing I could nitpick is that the book doesn’t contain a sequence promised by the author at Stockport Noir where Tilly accompanies Poe to visit a sex shop. No idea where that would have fitted into the plot, but it would have been good for a laugh. The book didn’t need it though, just to be clear.

Fans of the series will be delighted to know that Tilly has plenty to do here, taking the lead in some aspects of the plot, and there’s a more proactive role for Estelle. There are two other developments in Poe’s life that will be important down the line, but I’m not going to say anything about – just another smidge of praise as to how Mike continues to move the protagonists forward in life, rather than just dealing with their yearly psychopath problem.

Well, if I haven’t convinced you yet, I doubt I will be able to, so I’ll just say it again – a fantastic thriller in a series of fantastic thrillers. Read all of them – and then start waiting for Book Nine, just like I am already doing…

The Killer’s Mark is out on August 13th from Constable in hardback and ebook. Many thanks for the advance review copy. Very much appreciated…