Welcome back Logan and Steel, how you were missed.

This House of Burning Bones is a gripping read that you can get totally immersed in.

Its hard to believe this is the 20th anniversary of this series and I must say this is my favourite book to date. (and I have loved them all).

There is a heatwave in Aberdeen and its Covid as Logan and his misfit team investigate an arson in a home full of migrants.

Things go from bad to worse as a media mogul has gone missing.

Stuart MacBride is the master of dealing with serious crimes and issues and at the same time have you laughing at out loud .

I loved the fact it is a big book to get lost in and yet the pages fly by with twists and turns.

My only complaint is that I did not want this book to end and cant wait to get my hard copy to sit on my shelves with the others.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pan MacMillan/MacMillan for the privilege of reading and reviewing This House of Burning Bones.

THIS HOUSE OF BURNING BONES is one-half magnum opus and one-half total screw-up. It is unlikely to draw many new fans to Stuart MacBride's writings, and even devoted fans, like me, will likely be confused and disappointed with parts of it. MacBride did not follow the often-repeated, excellent advice, of "Kill Your Darlings", which is why it frequently becomes confusing jumble.

It starts out well, in typical MacBride fashion, with the POV of a serial rapist, preparing for his latest victim to appear, when suddenly he is a witness to a kidnapping. Unlike most thrillers, where perpetrators such as serial rapists are usually depicted as clever and cunning, this one seems rather dense and is definitely fearful. Nonetheless, he manages to escape unscathed.

The scene then switches to an attempted arrest of an identified arson murderer, who manages to evade being captured, followed by a long—much too long—chase with him in an ice cream van followed by a car of "Krazy Kops" led by DI Logan McRae. ("Krazy Kops" was a series of silent comedy movies produced by the Keystone Film Company—classics in their time. Much of McBride's Logan McRae series of books is a play on the Krazy Kops theme.) Note: The Alsatian was the best part in a zany chase made up of many great segments—but it went on for too long. Roberta Steel is back, sitting in the cop car chasing the arsonist, but she is now Detective Sergeant Roberta Steel and I don't know why; I read all the Logan McRae novels and I can't remember her being demoted.

There is a huge cast of characters, some I vaguely remember from previous books in the series, some who are definitely new, plus two major cases for Logan to solve—the arson murder and the kidnapping—and numerous tangential police investigations/actions that must be dealt with in the course of this lengthy novel. Characters I should have remembered, I cannot, like Logan's wife, Tara, and daughter, Elizabeth. There is little or no background information provided about the majority of recurring characters. Not only are readers new to the series left floundering about the backgrounds of most returning characters in this series, but long-time readers are as well. If you don't have a photographic memory for everything you read—total recall for everything that has occurred in the previous 12 books in the series—you will frequently be left wondering who? why? how does this fit in?

In addition, there are gaps between what is in the book and what I remember from previous books. For example, Roberta Steel's long-time wife, is briefly mentioned, but I remember that Logan provided sperm to help Steel and her wife conceive a daughter, who appeared in at least one of the later books, yet seems to have completely disappeared in this one—not even a brief mention.

And there are three sequences that go one far too long, are described blow-by-blow in tedious detail—the already mentioned arson killer car chase, the clown sequence, and an attempted escape from a torturer/killer.

If it were all terrible, I would give it a one- or two-star rating, but there are so many flashes of brilliance that it deserves a four-star rating from readers who have diligently followed the series. I have highlighted many sequences that I loved. Here, perhaps, is my favourite:

'Who does Daddy love most in the whole wide world?'
Elizabeth didn't even have to think about it: 'Cthulhu.'
'True.' He gave her tummy a prod. 'But who does Daddy love almost as much as Cthulhu?'

(Note: Cthulhu is Logan's cat.) How many other readers will adore that sequence, I don't know.

The entire book is a depiction of the crazy state of the world, seen from a police perspective. An homage to all the Krazy Kops trying to keep the world sane. That is its brilliance.

Thanks to Pan Macmillan for providing an electronic copy of this book via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinions.