Angels passing - Graham Hurley

ANGELS PASSING is a massive Dickensian trawl through the depths of life in Portsmouth. With a compactly labyrinthine plot, uniquely human policemen, a grotesque rogues gallery of squalid villains and a shadowy child as anti-hero it is easily the best thing he has ever written. Its 130,000 words are devoted to the events of just one week - it's a breathtaking and harrowing ride.

Focused around two investigations - the hunt for a ten year old boy who may be linked to the death of a teenage girl and a murder enquiry prompted by the discovery of the body of a small time crook on wasteland north of the city - ANGELS PASSING takes us to the core of Faraday's flawed relationships with both his girlfriend and his son, it reveals more of Winter's brutally effective take on the job and provides a grimly recognisable post mortem report on a society that is coming apart at the seams.

This is at once an unremittingly realistic fast moving crime thriller and a bleakly moving novel about the price children are paying for a society that is in freefall.