Angels Passing - Graham Hurley

"Angels Passing" is a 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's a breathtaking and harrowing ride. Devoted to the events of just one week, and 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 complex relationships, serves as a grimly recognisable post-mortem 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.