A red-hot cop thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Anne Faircroft was a high school bully, a nasty piece of work, who tormented her victims relentlessly and mercilessly. She was the queen of high school cruel. Even so, she didn’t really deserve her fate – to be brutally tortured until death, in its mercy, finally released her body from its gruesome earthly bonds. But Anne Faircroft wasn’t alone; three other female high schoolers in the Los Angeles core had met a similar, horrible fate.

Enter John Cooper, a veteran, hard-boiled L.A. detective. He and his partner Kelly McArthur have been assigned to take charge of the serial-murder case and he’s been told in no uncertain terms to find the killer and close the books.

One problem: Cooper’s ambitious boss, Commander Randall Sinclair, has this thing for Cooper – Sinclair wants the case solved because he’s on the fast-track at headquarters, but at the same time, he wants to pull the rug from under Cooper’s career. He wants to destroy Cooper and will stop at nothing to do so. But that’s only part of Cooper’s troubles.

An inmate’s bungled attempt at escape from a downtown L.A. courthouse has put the lives of hostages at risk – and the only cop he’s willing to negotiate with is Cooper himself. If Cooper doesn’t show, if Cooper doesn’t hold up his end of the bargain, those innocent hostages are doomed to die.

That’s the central theme and fast-moving narrative of A Dish Served Cold, the debut crime-thriller novel of Ontario-based author G.S. Marriott. Marriott, himself a former cop, knows police procedure and the process of criminal investigations – and he understands the workings of the police mind and mentality. And Marriott, just like Cooper, understands the politics of police headquarters all too well – the bad guys, the criminals on the street, may not be your biggest enemies.

A Dish Served Cold is a taut, well-constructed cop mystery thriller. It’s a page-turner, with a fast-moving, twist-and-turn plotline that satisfies and surprises as Cooper pulls out all the stops in his search for the young women’s killer. And it’s deftly written, too, the well-constructed product of a new writer with a fine eye for detail and drama. G.S. Marriott has a winner on his hands here – and his unshakeable John Cooper character is a man worth watching and following.

A Dish Served Cold is a hot debut novel from a writer who knows his turf and his territory.

••• ISBN: 9780991986200