Innocent Guilt, Remi Kone

I have no idea what made me pluck this one out of the library's lists, but I am so very glad I did. The blurb gives some hints about the set up of INNOCENT GUILT, but it didn't say anything that made me think this would be as compelling, and as engaging as it was until I noticed Christopher Brookmyre's quote: 'A pedal-to-the-metal trip into the scariest places in the human mind'. I mean if HE thinks that it gets into the scariest places in the human mind, then I'm in.

It all kicks off when an uninjured woman, covered in blood, clutching a blood covered baseball bat walks, on her own, into DI Leah Hutch's police station in London. She's silent, perhaps in deep shock, unable, or is it unwilling, to explain what has happened, to who, and more importantly where. So everything starts off with Hutch and Randle's team not sure if they are looking for a victim, or a badly injured survivor. Until a man is found battered to death in a nearby park, with journalist Odie Reid in the vicinity after a tip off. Reid is badly in need of a journalistic scoop to recover her flagging reputation and career, so she sets out initially determined to link the death to the woman in custody, only it turns out that the evidence shows this is not as straight-forward as it seems.

Not straight-forward is the byword for this entire novel when you get right down to it. Nothing's straight-forward about any of the characters, their pasts, futures, and relationships - personal and professional. There's so much baggage in places you have to wonder if they can all carry it, or whether it's going to fall and trip some people over into some very dark places. Not quite as dark as the places that a group of men find themselves in though - battered to death in the most horrendous way, the investigators all think this has to be personal - but finding the connection is again - not straight-forward.

Nor is identifying the suspect as a couple of women come into focus, and then it gets even more messy.

It really wasn't until I was well into this thing that something suddenly occurred (nothing like being quick on the uptake...) that this was a novel about male victims being investigated / followed up by mostly female investigators (DS Ben Randle being the obvious exception here). DI Leah Hutch is your classic tortured with a backstory lead investigator though with issues aplenty, some of which includes her past with journalist Odie Reid. Who is herself a mess of professional reputation going south in a hurry, a fractured family (mostly because of what she's done) and sheer desperation to haul everything back into control. There are supportive bosses, not so supportive bosses, seemingly undeserving victims, female suspects, teenagers off the rails and at the centre of it all - a police investigation under a lot of pressure and some pretty horrendous attacks and murders - very physical, very violent, very very messy.

The whole thing is held together magnificently by DI Leah Hutch and her team, all of whom are not underplayed whilst Hutch is the focus of attention. Reid is herself not exactly a bit player in all of this, and it's interesting to see two women, with a difficult past, trying to find a way to move forward, particularly as the body count increases, the suspect pool gets odd, and the threat personal.

Really enjoyed this police procedural - released earlier in 2025. It certainly doesn't hurt that the author is an Emmy-nominated producer for such excellent British crime dramas as Spooks and Killing Eve but that doesn't mean that INNOCENT GUILT is screen skewed, it works on the page firstly, and would work well on the screen eventually. It's a very current day story, which does get a little bogged down in the personal angst of its main characters at points. This reader had absolutely no issues in cutting it some slack though, it's a debut that's tackling the the causes and consequences of people's behaviour and actions - regardless of which side of the law they are operating on.