Long Way Home by Eva Dolan

A man is burnt alive in a suburban garden shed.

DI Zigic and DS Ferreira are called in from the Peterborough Hate Crimes Unit to investigate the murder. Their victim is quickly identified as a migrant worker and a man several people might have had good reason to see dead. A convicted arsonist and member of a far-right movement has just been released from prison, while witnesses claim to have seen the dead man fighting with one of the town's most prominent slum landlords.

Zigic and Ferreira know all too well the problems that come with dealing with a community that has more reason than most not to trust the police, but when another migrant worker is attacked, tensions rapidly begin to rise as they search for their killer.

Long Way Home by Eva Dolan was published in paperback on 19 June 2014 by Vintage, and is the author's debut novel.

This is a bleak, violent, no-holds-barred crime novel that is exposes the darker side of the issue of migrant workers and their gang masters in the fens around Peterborough.

DI Zigic and DS Ferreira work on the Hate Crime Unit and when a man is burnt alive in a garden shed, their investigations reveal a complex and incredibly violent underworld in a fairly run-down and deprived Peterborough. Both of these Police Officers are from ethnic minority backgrounds, a fact that helps and sometimes hinders their investigations.

Be prepared for some pretty full-on, explicit scenes of cruelty and suffering in Long Way Home, but also be prepared for an extremely well written crime story that explores issues that many of us are unaware of. Eva Dolan writes with authenticity, her descriptive prose is excellent and her two main characters are very well formed. Zigic and Ferreira are complex characters, each with their own complications and distinct story, so different to each other, yet the perfect partners for investigation crime and getting to the bottom of things.

Eva Dolan, Zigic and Ferreira are welcome additions to the world of the police procedure series; new and exciting, great writing, fast moving plot and exploring a theme that has rarely been written about in fiction. This is gritty and real, often uncomfortable, sometimes shocking, but very impressive.

My thanks to the author who sent my copy for review.

Eva Dolan is an Essex-based copywriter and intermittently successful poker player. 

Shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Dagger for unpublished authors when she was just a teenager, Long Way Home is her debut novel and the start of a major new crime series starring two detectives from the Peterborough Hate Crimes Unit. The second book in the series will be published in 2015.

Follow her on Twitter @eva_dolan