Times' Marcel Berlins' crime review - 7th April 2012

Marcel Berlins lists DCI Kate Daniels as one of two Northerners to join the roster of top literary detectives.

A welcome to two excellent police thriller debuts, both set in the North East and both introducing coppers whom I hope will be around for some time . . .

The feisty, stubborn, occasionally subordinate heroine of Mari Hannah's The Murder Wall, DCI Kate Daniels of the Newcastle police, too ambitious for her own good, having to mask her sexuality, sees a murder in a posh flat as a chance to redeem her failure to solve a similar killing a year before. But the new inquiry turns out to involve someone she's very close to; there's an ethical issue. Hannah is especially good at portraying the emotional interactions and office politics of a fraught police force.