Storm Peak should have a familiar feel to readers of police procedural fiction: the sexy female sheriff, the laconic detective scarred by the death of his partner, the bullied child grown into a cold-blooded killer...all of the old ingredients are here. Unfortunately, however, there’s not much else. Storm Peak is largely crime fiction by numbers. In this debut adult novel by children’s author John A Flanagan, the plot focusses on a series of brutal and baffling killings in a small US ski town. It also provides a simmering romance between the androgynously named police officers investigating the case, Lee Torrens and Jesse Parker--who were, of course, childhood sweethearts. This is naturally complicated by the reappearance of Jesse’s ex-wife, Abby, a sultry, blonde news reporter. There’s nothing wrong with writing a genre piece: The books in Flanagan’s bestselling ‘Ranger’s Apprentice’ series were genre pieces, and they were absolutely riveting. However, where they tended to race along, this book plods, leaden-footed, and I never managed to fully shake the sense that Flanagan was consulting a manual entitled: ‘How to write a successful crime novel’. Fans of Michael Connelly might like to give this series a go. But they shouldn’t expect too many surprises. (See interview page 60.)

Leonie Jordan is a high school English teacher and former bookseller

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