
Part of Series
**PREORDER THE LATEST DI RYAN WILKINS MYSTERY NOW** On a warm and pleasant evening in Oxford, gentle city of poets and scholars, rioters outside a hotel full of asylum seekers set a young refugee on fire. The city - the country - convulses in shock. Is this who we are? It's international news of the very worst kind, and the Chief Constable demands immediate and exemplary action in bringing the perpetrators to justice. The detectives leading the investigation fill him with misgivings, DIs Ryan and Ray Wilkins (no relation), Thames Valley's detective pantomime horse, one Oxford-educated, the other Oxford-trailer park. He doesn't understand why they work together. 'Do they even get on?' 'Somehow that doesn't seem necessary,' their Superintendent replies. Who burned the boy alive? Was it a far-right extremist? Was it an ordinary person who had simply gone along to watch and got caught up in the emotion? Could it even be one of the children who were there? Deploying a range of investigative skills, some standard, some unconventional and some frankly nuts, the Wilkinses do what they results with chaos. But when they discover that the victim was not an asylum seeker after all, or even a resident of the hotel, the whole investigation kicks into a completely different configuration. PRAISE FOR THE RYAN WILKINS MYSTERIES 'I am absolutely hooked. Ryan Wilkins is a most extraordinary creation. There has never been a detective like him. Mason writes quite magnificently. Add to that brilliant plotting and character drawing that Le Carré would be proud off... well, this is absolutely first class" - STEPHEN FRY 'Ryan and Ray go from strength to strength, and this, their third outing, is the best yet. Simon Mason has created crime fiction's most entertaining double act in decades.' - MICK HERRON 'Move over Morse. Simon Mason's Oxford crime novel confounds all our expectations' - VAL McDERMID 'My favourite UK series' - M W CRAVEN
Author

Simon Mason was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, on 5 February 1962. He was educated at local schools and studied English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. He splits his time between writing at home and a part-time editorial position with David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House and publisher of his 2011 children's novel, Moon Pie. He is the author of the Quigleys series for young readers: The Quigleys (Highly Commended in the UK's Branford Boase Award), The Quigleys at Large, The Quigleys Not for Sale, and The Quigleys in a Spin. He has also written three adult novels. Simon lives in Oxford with his wife and two children.


