While this is the 10th book in the Ishmael Jones series, Simon R. Green shares enough backstory - with a delicate touch and not an infodump in sight - that you can absolutely read this one without having read the rest of the series. This might actually be a closer for the series, as Ishmael comes full circle back to his beginnings… the alien ship which crash-landed outside a small town in England in 1963.
Norton Hedley was weird even before a UFO crashed there, and it hasn’t gotten any less strange in the last half century. From the moment Ishmael and his partner Penny arrive, they can sense Something watching them… and then the bodies start turning up.
Ishmael is occasionally a bit too smug to be likeable, and the murderer was very strongly telegraphed - seriously, there was nobody else left standing - but Green tells a ripping yarn and I can forgive a great deal for the sake of his gorgeous, descriptive prose. I’ll be honest and say I hope this does wrap up the series and Green moves on to focus on the Gideon Sable series instead because I am in love with that series, but honestly I’ll gladly read anything he writes. Five stars.
Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this title via NetGalley.