Mari Hannah is one of the region’s most lauded authors and she has three different strands of crime fiction to her name including the Ryan and O’Neil series (featuring a pair of Northumbria CID officers), and the Stone and Oliver series (featuring more north-east cops based high-jinx). Her longest running series however features the trials and tribulations of DCI Kate Daniels, and ‘The Longest Goodbye’ is the ninth book in that particular run. It begins with the shocking events of three years earlier when police officer Georgina Ioannau is gunned down in some woods near her house in an execution-like hit. Two local gangsters are strongly suspected of carrying out in the killing, especially when said gangsters go to ground – current whereabouts unknown. Switching to the present, the whereabouts of the gangsters becomes all too apparent when they are attacked and killed outside a house in Heaton. But were they the ones actually responsible for killing Ioannau? Because if they were then there are many – not least among Ioannau’s family and on the force itself – who would be happy to see them dead. ‘The Longest Goodbye’ sees Daniels tackling the cold-case of her fallen colleague while the rest of her crew busy themselves with the pressing matter of having two dead gangsters on their manor. For the reader there’s a lot to get stuck into here, but Hannah is an absolute master at keeping all those plates spinning. She’s also brilliant at giving us an insight into how police officers rub along together – for good or ill – when those tensions begin to ratchet up and startling revelations tumble forth. RM