Having left Texarkana for the safety of the West Coast, reporter Charlie Yates finds himself drawn back to the South, to Hot Springs, Arkansas, as an old acquaintance asks for his help.

This time it’s less of a story Charlie’s chasing, more of a desperate attempt to do the right thing before it’s too late.

My thanks to Faber for my review copy

In Black Night Falling we are re-united with Charlie Yates, first encountered in last year’s brilliant The Dark Inside. This is a good start, Yates was a character I had really enjoyed reading about, his personal demons battling his dogged determination to chase down a story and uncover the truth.

The housekeeping – Black Night Falling is a stand alone novel and can be enjoyed as such, however, there are some threads which will follow on from The Dark Inside and you will get the best experience reading the books in order. This in its-self is not a problem as both are cracking reads.

Charlie Yates once again finds himself unpicking the lies as he tries to get to the bottom of the seemingly unconnected deaths of young women in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Charlie has come to town following a request for help from an old friend, however, Charlie arrives too late and learns his friend died in a tragic accident a few days earlier.  Picking up the investigation with only the cryptic notes left by his late friend, Charlie finds another small town is unwilling to spill the beans on the powerful men who are very much in control of their community. And powerful men can have a long reach – well beyond Hot Springs and all the way to Charlie’s home.

The pressure is on Charlie to turn tail and head home. Snooping is very much discouraged and exposing corruption and murder is not going to make life easy for Charlie Yates. But as we learned in The Dark Inside, Yates does not walk away from the corruption, he will root it out and expose the culprits.

Black Night Falling is a treat for readers that like their adventure stories grounded, gritty and gripping. Rod Reynolds knows how to spin a story and he can ramp up the tension and befuddle the reader with red herrings. His books are a delight to read.

So, should you read Black Night Falling?  Absolutely. And soon.

Black Night Falling released on 4 August 2016 and you can purchase a copy through this link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Night-Falling-Charlie-mystery/dp/0571323219/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469832190&sr=8-1&keywords=black+night+falling

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