Ray is an Oxford-educated Black man — handsome, impeccably dressed, diplomatic, and dedicated to correct police procedure. But to make the chav white trailer trash, partnered with an Oxford-educated person of colour, as the lead figure is a change. And don’t get me started on his 2-year-old son seemingly having language skills that would put most secondary school kids to shame, a recurring feature which annoyed me more than it probably should). A very readable debut and clearly the start of a new detective series starring DIs Wilkins and Wilkins.

And too many pages at the end are taken up by a rather breathless rush through tying up the loose ends. I like the setting, the characters and especially the wild Wilkins not so much, a bit over the top and so much stearing that it became tiresome. Ryan Wilkins was raised in a trailer park, had a violent alcoholic father, his girlfriend died of a drug overdose and left him with a young son. Discretion is a venerable Oxford tradition, so too refinement and good manners; it is rare for a college to have anything so crude as a sign with its name on outside its gates.I'm a die hard Morse fan so probably very blinkered when it comes to the Oxford crime scene but with this novel Simon Mason has put a fresh up to date slant on life in the elitist educational capital bringing it right into the 21st century with a bang. Inevitably, with its Oxford setting and its murder in the office of a College provost, comparisons will be made to Morse. And for good measure, I thought I’d give Ryan an unlikely partner, the suave and sophisticated Ray, London-Nigerian graduate of Balliol College and boxing blue of the university.

The Oxford college setting is perfect for Ryan's first outing, emphasising his otherness and setting him up in belligerent opposition to the forces of tradition and establishment. T]his is a very individual piece of work, with a satisfying plot involving Syrian refugees, snobbish dons and nimble interaction between the ill-assorted protagonists.För övrigt: smart av Mason att så medvetet (och för historien avgörande) låta sina karaktärer ha så snarlika namn. I must admit at the beginning I found Ryan a character that stretched credulity as he dressed in trackies and a baseball cap worn backwards, arriving from Wiltshire under a dark cloud, rude and aggressive in his questioning of suspects and witnesses, with strong anger management issues, but he grew on me, and I found I was more than willing to suspend my sense of disbelief.

Ray is reprimanded for not managing to control Ryan, which to be honest is not a realistic possibility, and Ryan finds himself in trouble as he locks horns with the powerful, but his troubles just seem to grow and grow. There were one or two small things that didn’t quite ring true but overall this is a hugely enjoyable novel and you’ll find yourself rooting for the central character despite his failings. At first he wrote books for adults, then books for children, which grew up at roughly the same rate his own children grew up, and now he is back writing books for adults again. Mason avoids the obvious tropes, and rather movingly focuses on Ryan's relationship with his young son. His novels have been shortlisted for a number of awards, including the Branford Boase Prize for Best First Children's Novel, the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Costa Prize for Best Children's Book, and have won the Betty Trask for Best First Novel and the Crimefest Prize for Best YA Crime Novel.T]his is a very individual piece of work , with a satisfying plot involving Syrian refugees, snobbish dons and nimble interaction between the ill-assorted protagonists. Raymond is a posh Nigerian-Brit with Oxford pedigree, Ryan is a white underclass foul-mouthed chav brought up in an Oxford trailer park by an alcoholic (Oxford area has some of the worst income inequality in the UK). I would imagine that even a direct applicant to the police force in the UK would be required to have some A level qualifications, to say the least, to be able to have a career as a detective. An interesting central character: troubled policeman, operating outside the rules, so far so conventional, but Ryan Wilkins is engagingly different.