Lunchtime read: The Man on the Balcony

With the discovery of a dead child the pace of the thriller picks up and the key to getting a break in the case is to disover the identity of the mugger who was operating in the park at the same time as the killer.

The police are at each other’s throats suffering from sleep deprivation, colds and general grumpiness. At points all they can see in each other are faults and because there are the dual investigations of the mugger and the child killer – who strikes again in another park murdering another 10 year old girl – Beck is not in overall control.

Where it does feel like it is getting back onto Beck dominated ground is when the policeman follows his instinct and interviews a three-year-old boy who unwittingly met the killer and was fobbed off with an underground ticket.

Added to that the mugger is caught as a result of his girlfriend dropping him in it and he did indeed see the killer. Those two developments mean the net is tightening but there are plenty of pages left to have a twist or two.