Dead Pretty - David Mark
Leaving aside the US variety for the moment (a different breed entirely), it's fairly evident that all the best continuing UK criminal investigator series have a charismatic lead character and their own particular patch to work on; a cityscape that usually feeds in to a large extent to make the characters who they are. You have all that in Ian Rankin's John Rebus, Denise Mina's Alex Morrow, Val McDermid's Tony Hill and Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne novels. Those books need a little more than that however, and - aside from the nature of their investigations (by no means the least important element) - it helps when there is a good team built up around them. David Mark's DS McAvoy series also clearly has what it takes, even if none of those elements fit the template in the conventional way. Take also the setting of Mark's crime fiction series. It's not London, Glasgow or Edinburgh, it's Hull, but Mark's writing and descriptions of the setting noneth...