One of the benefits of being an author is that you get to mix with other authors. Not that there’s an authors club or anything like that (at least, I don’t think so), but there are different events that take place over the year and , if you feel the urge, you can participate. As the number of authors you meet builds, you also get offered other opportunities that you wouldn’t ordinarily get. One of these is the chance to read new books before they’re released. Sometimes those books are from authors you’ve read before and you’re looking out for for the next one anyway. Very often, though, they’ll be from authors you haven’t tried before and in genres that you wouldn’t ordinarily lean towards. And that’s not a bad thing.
Just recently, I got the chance to read Trish Finnegan’s latest novel, Blue Flame. It’s actually the fourth in a series, which I didn’t realise until I started reading. And I also hadn’t taken enough notice of the subject matter before I said yes. Anyway, here’s the blurb:
A darkness stalks the streets. A seething undercurrent of misogyny which threatens to ruin lives.
For WPC Sam Barrie, life at Wyre Hall police station is finally settling down. Now she is one of the more experienced officers, she is finally able to focus on the things that matter – like moving up in her career, passing her police driving course, and setting her sights on joining CID.
But pretty soon she is dealing with a spate of sightings of someone impersonating a police officer. When women in the area start to go missing, Sam once again finds herself at the heart of an investigation, which will shock to the core all those whose lives it touches, and leave Sam fighting for her life.
Constable Sam Barrie is back in this latest explosive instalment of the Blue Bird series.
It was that last line that alerted me to the fact that there were previous books, and I did start reading with some trepidation. Not only because I wondered whether I’d need to know what had gone before, but also because this was about uniformed police. Most of my reading – and TV viewing – about British policing tends to revolve around detective work, so I’m used to specialist units or CID at least. And it was set in the ’70s, so I had images of Dixon of Dock Green* going through my head.
On all counts, I needn’t have worried. There clearly was some back story, but anything relevant was alluded to sufficiently to allow the story to progress without interrupting the flow or, worse, leaving me wondering. In short, it worked well as a stand-alone. That said, there were enough hints in there to make me want to go back and read the earlier novels.
As for the detective work, CID did get involved, but it was interesting to follow the story from the perspective of the uniformed officer. And, it certainly wasn’t as pedestrian as the Dixon stories were – at least, as far as I can remember. That doesn’t mean to say it was the kind of book that grabs you by the scruff of the neck and drags you kicking and screaming to the end. Indeed, after the opening teaser, the pace was relatively gentle to start with. Don’t get me wrong, though, I found it difficult to put down and, when I did, I looked for every opportunity to pick it back up again.
The mix of procedure, the camaraderie (and otherwise) between the coppers, the relationships built up on the beat – something you’d find hard to imagine in 2025 – and the cases that begin to become more prominent as the story progresses, all come together to create a compelling narrative as well as an insight to life as a WPC in the late 1970s. On each of those levels, the book works really well.
To tell you more would lead you into spoiler territory. All I can say is that I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to read Blue Flame, and I will make time to return to the series in the future. If you’re interested yourself, the book is available to pre-order at the moment, but will be on general sale from 22nd May.
If I have piqued your interest in this book and you want to know more, click on the image below for the Amazon link.
*For younger readers, Dixon of Dock Green was a BBC TV series that ran for about 20 years until the mid 1970s. I have a vague recollection of it from my youth, but seem to recall it was about everyday policing rather than major crimes. Although it was popular in its day, my own recollections of the storylines were that they were boring. Then again, I was into The Six Million Dollar Man, The Sweeney and Starsky and Hutch. There was no comparison.