MYSTERIES in PARADISE: Review: LUCIFER FALLS, Colin Falconer

3 August 2021

Review: LUCIFER FALLS, Colin Falconer

This edition large print from W F Howes LTD 2019
first published UK 2018 by Constable
ISBN 978-1-52886-149-6
422 pages
#1 in the Charlie George series
author website

So many ways you could die. He knows every one of them.

A priest is found crucified in a derelict North London chapel.

“This is one for the ages,” DI Charlie George tells his squad next morning as they gather in the Incident Room at the Essex Road nick.

Their usual round is sorting cases of domestic violence, or a couple of stabbings on the estates.

When the case doesn’t get sorted, everyone gets nervous. And with good reason: it’s about to get a lot worse.

On Christmas night, a cop is found buried up to his neck on Hampstead Heath. He’s been stoned to death. Are the two murders related? None of his bosses wants to think so.

Charlie journeys into the city’s cold underbelly to try and find an answer to the madness before anyone else dies a martyr’s death…

Lucifer Falls is the first in Colin Falconer’s contemporary crime series, set in North London, featuring DI Charlie George.

My Take

This title got me in right from the beginning. At first Charlie George seems to be your run-of-the-mill flawed DI, and this seems to be yet another police procedural. But there is a lot more. Charlie seems to have had his fair share of failures, and a boss who wants to blame him for a few more. His original offsider goes out on stress leave when a kid he is chasing is run over by a bus, and Charlie is left to work with a woman newly posted to the Murder Squad. Charlie is married to the Murder Squad (although he has his "bit on the side"), and his background, experience and education keep him working at problems.

The plot got me in. The two initial murders, nicknamed Operation Galilee because the first is crucified, got me looking for connections, just as Charlie was doing. And I got there - at least I found the first connection - although it was Charlie's mother who gave us the second bit. Interestingly the author introduced readers to the murderer early on, and Charlie had seen him in passing, but the motives behind why he was doing what he was doing were well hidden until towards the end.

Here is a writer whose experience shines through (he is a prolific writer see Fantastic Fiction). The characters are well developed and the scenarios very believable. I'm sure I'll be reading the next.

My rating: 4.6

About the author

Colin Falconer writes crime fiction and historical fiction. He has written twenty-six novels which have been translated into 23 languages.

In between leaving school and securing his latest publishing deal, he found time to
chase black witches across Mexico, travel the silk road, and occasionally play the
guitar in pubs. His only claim to fame from those days is completing all the verses of
‘All You Need is Love’ during a bar fight in the Stella Maris Sailors Club.

After a short stint in advertising he became a freelance journalist. He also worked in
radio and television before writing novels.

Colin Falconer (born 1953) is a pen name of Colin Bowles, who also uses the pen name Mark D'Abranville,[1] an English-born Australian writer. Works published under the pen name include contemporary and historical thrillers, and children's books. Under his original name he has also published books of satirical fiction; non-fiction books about language; television and radio scripts; and many magazine articles and columns.