A challenge for the reader

[John Dean]

Crime writer Ian Robinson has a new novel out, marking the return of renegade police officer Sam Batford in his latest undercover assignment for the Metropolitan Police.

In Lines Crossed (The Book Folks), an armed gang is robbing cash vans in North London, and Detective Sergeant Batford’s bosses want his help catching them. That’s not all that they want, though. Superintendent Klara Winter is looking to prove that he is corrupt.
However, Batford’s immediate danger is being found out by the ruthless mob he has infiltrated. Used to bending the rules to protect his life, will he use the chance to go clean, or take a step too far and cross the Rubicon?
Lines Crossed is the third book in the DS Sam Batford undercover investigations series and can be purchased on Amazon in e-book, paperback and hardback formats. The first two books, Criminal Justice and Status Drift, are also available on Kindle Unlimited and in paperback.

You can also look out for the author’s four-book Detectives Nash and Moretti crime mystery series, which starts with the novel Latent Damage.

Here is my review of Lines Crossed.

Sam Batford, the undercover detective sergeant who challenges the reader with his dubious behaviour and who is one of my favourite characters in crime fiction, is back.

Author Ian Robinson draws on his own police career to give the detective and the world he inhabits an authentic feel, and for me, one of the strongest elements is Batford’s voice, which works its magic as effectively as ever in the new novel Lines Crossed.

He speaks to the reader in a calm way, resisting the temptation to over-exaggerate the scenarios he experiences, preferring instead to describe them in a matter-of-fact way that has a chilling impact on the reader.

Another reason for Batford’s success as a character is the way he walks the narrow line between his job as an undercover officer and his own corrupt behaviour.

In Lines Crossed, as ever with the Batford stories, he challenges the reader who, if they are anything like me, find themselves prepared to support his dubious methods if it brings vicious criminals to justice, while at the same time feeling uneasy about his own law-breaking.

That quandary is unlikely to go away in the novels featuring Batford that I sincerely hope that Ian Robinson is writing/planning.