Detective Cass Jones follows in the footsteps of some venerable literary officers of the law - Morse, Sloan, Banks, Dover to name but a few - but I can guarantee than Jones will be the toughest one to get along with.

'A Matter of Blood' is the first book in the Dog-Faced Gods trilogy - and as an introduction to Cass, and the bleak dystopian future he inhabits is a very austere and harsh one; where the police have to take bribes from the criminal underworld as it's the only way they can guarantee a decent wage packet.

While looking into the case of a failed hit on an underworld figure, culminating in the death of two school children, Cass' life is suddenly turned inside out as his very successful brother shoots his own wife and child before committing suicide - leaving behind a very strong implication that Cass is heavily involved in their deaths. Then throw into the mix a serial killer called 'The Man of Flies' - and you have a workload that would cripple the hell out of your average DCI - but it's clear to see that Cass is no average DCI and he has to fight hard against forces he does not understand.

There is a strong, original voice in Cass Jones (with a slightly ghostliness of Irvine Welsh's timeless creation, Bruce Robertson somewhere in there) but this only happens when supernatural happenings emerge into the dank murkiness of the pages - Cass seems to be following the numbers of a slightly bent cop in The Bill for the first part of the book. But Cass is damaged, shrapnel damaged - and that's the key to him and that's where the latent sympathy for him comes from; he might be rotten bad in places, but he doesn't deserve all of the crap that's thrown at him.