The Flight

'Crime-Busting Cracker' Woman & Home

'Fasten your seatbelts for a quality thriller...Matthew Hall's first-rate books about unorthodox Bristol coroner Jenny Cooper. The Flight is Cooper's fourth outing and Hall's Gold Dagger-nominated books, quite simply, get better each time. Part of it is the former barrister and TV producer's ability to structure and deliver a thriller that has you keep turning the pages. I read The Flight, as its predecessors, at one sitting. But Hall is also a hit upon a genuinely fascinating aspect of the justice system...The most compelling element of Hall's books, however, is Cooper herself: difficult, damaged, self-destructive, struggling to recover from a divorce . . . It is wonderful stuff, chillingly plausible, but properly best not read on a long haul flight' Independent on Sunday

‘Ed McBain semi-inaugurated the forensics genre, but Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs parleyed his innovations into stratospheric sales. But the field has not become an exclusively female sorority – or an American domain. A highly talented male writer has offered a challenge, albeit one who plays safe by using a woman protagonist. The Coroner (2009) by M R Hall was an instant hit. His heroine Jenny Cooper, a divorcée who has had a nervous breakdown, struggled with a new job as coroner for the Severn Vale . . . It would appear that Hall has decided to broaden his canvas with this latest outing for his protagonist, still dependent on prescription drugs. She is coming to terms with the breakdown that we read about in The Coroner, but still fragile. Here, she is up against her most dangerously influential opponents . . . It looks like Jenny Cooper – and her creator – are here for the long haul: good news for readers’ Independent

‘An edge-of-the-seat thriller . . . this fourth novel in the excellent Jenny Cooper series should come with a health warning’ Irish Independent