This is the fifth book in the series. The characters are well developed and are flawed. This book has some great plot twists. Looking forward to more in the series.

Another great addition to the DI Barton series. I love the original way that the author writes his books. He tells the plot from the POV of DI Barton and the voice of the ‘Killer’ he writes so that you spend the whole of the book thinking you have worked out who the killer is to then get proved wrong and then you think 🤔’argh that’s who it is ‘ and then it works out yet again to not be the person you thought it was !! Brilliant!!

Ross Greenwood’s latest DI Barton crime thriller, The Fire Killer, is a nail-biting chiller guaranteed to keep readers on tenterhooks from start to finish.

DI Barton’s latest case puts him on the trail of the mastermind behind a seemingly random arson attack. At first, Barton thinks that this fire might be the handiwork of bored kids or else a racially motivated crime, but the more he investigates, the more he realizes that he might be dealing with someone even more twisted and terrifying. It turns out that this fire is not an isolated incident because years ago, similar fires had broken out all within a close area. Could there be some connection? Or is Barton barking up the wrong tree and looking for something that isn’t there?

With Barton’s pathologist suggesting that there could even more sinister undertones to these fires than he initially thought, when a night worker comes forward with a tip, the DI wonders whether he is getting closer to the truth – or whether he is being led a merry dance. With all the people in the frame acting suspiciously, Barton is convinced that they’ve all got something to hide – a hunch that is compounded by a huge house fire that shocks everyone.

Who is The Fire Killer’s next victim? What will their next move be? And more to the point, can Barton find this monster before it’s too late?

Gritty, twisted and packed with shock after shock, The Fire Killer is a superbly plotted crime thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat until the last page. Brilliantly pitched, cleverly constructed and packed with plenty of action, tension and adrenaline, Ross Greenwood’s The Fire Killer is a high stakes police procedural where the pages will just turn themselves.

Fifth in this series featuring D I Barton. Lots of suspects,lots of motives and plenty of twists. A good read.

This book starts with a shocking chapter that puts the reader on alert that things are going to get wild. DI John Barton and his colleague Shawn Zander race to a house fire where two of their teammates are attempting to rescue a woman. Just as they arrive, an explosion rocks the house with both of their teammates inside.

The Fire Killer then goes back to the start of the investigation. A small trash fire outside a convenience store does not seem to be the sort of crime that would involve detectives. Barton and his team are called when the inside of the rubbish bin holds a badly charred body. With no identification and no reports of a missing person that matches the body, the detectives struggle to find the identity of the victim and any motive for the crime.

A lead begins to unravel the mystery. Having identified the victim, the team begins to look for suspects. Their challenge quickly becomes determining which of the odd characters they’ve identified might be the killer. They are also uncertain whether the fire was meant to kill or if the death was an unhappy coincidence of a drunk person choosing the wrong place and the wrong time to sleep it off.

So: was it the ex-boyfriend? The previous girlfriend of the ex-boyfriend? The local neighborhood pot grower? The acerbic old man or his teenaged grandson? The neighborhood tough guy? Or someone else? While they try to figure this out, another fire breaks out. Then a house fire, with an elderly woman inside who barely escapes when a stranger rescues her. The fires keep coming, the danger keeps growing, and the case gets larger and larger.

I really appreciate the occasional police procedural with a cop in a stable marriage. DI John Barton tries to be a good husband and a good father. It’s hard with his job, but he makes great effort to be there for his family as well as be good at his job. I am quite confident that being a cop puts enormous stress on relationships, and many fail (or fail to begin) because of that. However, some people are able to persevere through the challenges, and as an old married person (going on 36 years) it is delightful to see myself represented in a book.

Ross Greenwood kept his cards well hidden. Despite (or maybe because) of the chapters written in the killer’s own voice, I did not identify the killer until the very end. Even then Greenwood had a few more twists to play out. The plot is well paced, the action keeps coming, the voice of the killer is chilling, and the effects on the team are powerful. For mystery fans there is everything to love about this book.

A skip burns. When the flames dies down, the fire brigade find a charred body. DI Barton needs to discover if the death was deliberate and the fire intentional, or could both have been accidental...?
The Fire Killer is the 5th book in the DI Barton series and I have reviewed the previous book The Cold Killer.
The book is mostly written from DI Barton's third person perspective. However, there are some chapters written from the Fire Killer's viewpoint and this made me sympathetic to them due to their past.
I found the pace of the book to be rather slow and it was less dramatic than the previous book. The number of suspects narrows down quite early on and all seem to have had the opportunity to set the fire. DI Barton needs to sift through the alibis and detect potential motives in order to make sense of the two strands to the case.
I enjoyed the personal life of the officers especially John Barton. It is quite refreshing to have a police character with a settled and happy home life. Meanwhile there is a love triangle between other officers in the team which allows for some great banter between the characters.
The Fire Killer is a solid police procedural novel with a great lead detective.

The Fire Killer by Ross Greenwood is the fifth book in the brilliant DI Barton series and these have been a fantastic read I have really enjoyed this series. This book was gripping from start to finish and this time we are taken on a roller coaster ride into the underworld where we venture into the life of drug abuse.
DI Barton is asked to investigate a seemingly innocuous fire that kills. He believes it's either children fooling around or a worrying racially motivated crime. As he investigates further in to these fires he soon realises that there is a history of similar blazes spread out over many years, all within a close area. And after an idea is suggested by pathologist Mortis, DI Barton suspects he has the arsonist’s motives wrong

Will DI Barton find the Fire killer before other people are hurt?

WoW I loved this book and I highly recommend this book. Another 5 star read.

Looking forward to Ross Greenwoods book .

The Fire Killer is the fifth book in the DI Barton series. I am a massive fan of the author having read all of his books he always brings us something different. With an awesome start I was well and truly hooked.

In this story we follow Barton on an investigates a fire that leads to a death. The case alternates between chapters from the Fire Killers POV. It has only been resently that I have enjoyed books from first person POV thanks to authors like Ross Greenwood. He takes us deep inside the characters mind, we get to really know them and what makes them tick Also at the same time keeping us guessing who The Fire Killer is! LOVE IT!!!

I love how this story has a mixture of everything going on making it very entertaining. The Fire Killer is well written and gritty. I read it in a day…. I couldn’t tear myself away. Just one more chapter I kept telling myself!

Barton is one of those characters that you will love and we get plenty of information of his home life mixed with humour. This book can be read has a standalone. If you have’nt read any of this series yet, I highly recommend them. There is nothing not to like and it ticked all the boxes for me.

Thank you to Rachel for the blog tour invite and to Boldwood Books for a copy all thoughts are my own and not baised in anyway.

This is the 5th installment of the DI Barton Series.

I couldn't really get in to the story, I found it wasn't very easy to pick up the series when I hadn't read the other books first.

I'm going to read the other ones, and then come back to this one and see if it makes more sense and if I can get to know the characters a bit better.

Thank you for the pre-read!

I've rated as 3 for now, and I'll re-rate if applicable when I've read the other books.

I received this book with thanks as an ARC from boldworld books.
5th in the series and gripping as always.
I would say that it did seem to get a bit confusing with multiple directions of plot that hasn't happened before, that being said still a really strong book. Great to get further into characters lives and to see compassion for the people the are dealing with.
Looking forward to possible final instalment.

Ross Greenwood is back with another instalment to his DI Barton series. I have enjoyed every book prior to this latest release and this book was no different. We are subjected to a more inside look into the lives of our favourite detective and dealing with a case in this covid world made this a little more subdued than the previous edge of you seat books.

That being said this was still very much an engrossing book. What starts of as an innocent bin fire turns sinister when a charred body is found underneath the rubbish, Barton and his team work hard to identify of the woman which leads to a snowball effect uncovering a drug chain that has the team wondering if the fire was deliberate to cover up the body or a pyromaniac who picked the wrong bin to set on fire.

We get the fire killers pov throughout the book and there we little moments when I thought I had the character pinned down to being the fire killer but in essence in the end I was proved wrong and kind of shocked I didn't work it out, and once their need to set another fire brings them closer to getting caught can Barton catch them before it goes to far?

This was a great book and I loved seeing more of the characters lives outside the police station, and I am ready for the next book in the series like right now!

5 stars

The house fire started by the Fire Killer was accidental but claimed the very first victim, a violent alcoholic husband and father left to perish in the flames. Years later the reader sees a fully-fledged pyromaniac, someone with the compulsion to set fires and gaining a sense of euphoria as the fire takes hold and the firefighters arrive. This time a human hand rises from the flames and the Fire Killer swears that the next fire will be the last one. DI John Barton from Peterborough’s Major Crimes and his team including his two loyal sergeants, DS Zander and DS Strange, DCs Leicester, Zelensky and Malik, together with newest recruit DC Nicola “Pigs” Pignatiello, attend the scene which is first presumed to be kids messing about with matches or worse, a racially motivated attack on a shopkeeper. However as the smoke clears, the body of a well-dressed young woman is found, having suffocated in the fire started in a skip. Was she the shoplifter seen taking whiskey from the shop earlier and how did she come to be in the skip? Mortis, the pathologist, suggests this could be more than simple arson and Barton is inclined to agree. If the killer has a pathological need to set fires, there could be far worse to come. Suspicion falls upon the residents of four nearby houses, all of whom are little odd and make good possible suspects. Finally the detectives establish an identity for the woman but are still unsure whether the motive centres around the victim or the killer. As they delve deeper into the victim’s past, all manner of leads and other crimes are exposed and Barton finds himself in the midst of dual and rapidly converging cases, but no one could predict the horrors that lie in wait for them.
In keeping with the rest of this series, the story is told from two sides. One is by the Fire Killer themselves and the other is an account of DI Barton and his team’s movements and investigations. I love the way we see the story unfolding from both perspectives. It is always interesting being better informed than the detectives, knowing the truth and waiting to see if they can make all the connections themselves. They are a great team, with an undoubted closeness and loyalty. It is also refreshing to find a lead detective with a pretty normal and happy family life outside of work, a family that sees a new member added in this story. All the characters are very well drawn and it is hard not to have empathy for some of the people featured. The plot is complex with lots of twists and surprises and a shocking ending. I’m looking forward to book six already! 5*

Another amazing book from this author! I really have to read this series from the beginning so I can read about the other cases. These books are stand-alones but throughout the books we do get to read about DI Barton. However, the cases in these books are unrelated.

This plot was so gripping, I couldn’t stop reading it once I started. The chapters in this book are told mainly on the perspective of DI Barton and then we get some chapters in the perspective of The Fire Killer. I loved the chapters told from The Fire Killers perspective because wit gave an insight to what they were thinking at the time. The investigation to find out who The Fire Killer was was so gripping. I couldn’t wait to find out who was behind it all. There were twists in the story and there were many suspicious characters.

This author creates characters who are mysterious which keeps the reader guessing. I couldn’t work out what actually happened and who done it until the very end. Even then I was shocked at what happened. I love DI Barton, he is dedicated to his job and to getting to the bottom of the investigations. In this book we can really see his soft side as he gets further into the investigation. We also get to read more about his personal live which was nice.

I loved the short chapters in this book. It made me read it so quickly. I also love this authors writing style, it is so easy to read and straight to the point. I highly recommend this book, series and author.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review the latest book in the "Di Barton" series, "The Fire Killer".
I cannot believe we're up to five books in this series. It seems not long ago that I started reading Ross Greenwood's series.
This time, the title says it all: Barton and his team are investigating a fiery death, a young woman who burnt to death in a skip (which I believe translates to a bin like we have for disposing of renovation materials, etc.). When the case turns from arson to the work of a pyromania, and the victim has ties to a 'county lines' narcotics case, things become complicated for DI Barton, 'Pigs', Strange and Zander.
And then, when another fire threatens the life of a young child, and still another an old woman, the team knows that they have to work fast to get to the bottom of things.
As always, Greenwood takes us right into the inner workings of not only the investigators, but also the fire marshal, the coroner (the aptly named Mortis) and even the drugs squad.
Then, and break in the case and someone is arrested; hopefully, this will be the end of the fires, but in a tragic twist it turns out that we - the readers - got it all wrong. And what follows makes for a great procedural.
Highly recommended as part of the series or a standalone.

Ross Greenwood has to be amongst my favourite authors. Every single book he writes is always superb, whether it be a DI Barton book or one of his others based on his prison work. The Fire Killer is the fifth book in the DI Barton series and still as brilliant as the rest of the series.

We are back with DI Barton, and, he has no idea just how big the investigation will get, when he is called out to a fire in a skip. A body is discovered in the skip,a young woman. Was this an accident or murder? Who is the young woman, with such little to go on, will they be able to identify her?

The story is told from the perspectives of the police and from the person who started the fire. This does ramp the tension and intrigue up so much as we are given the perspective of the fire starter but not the identity. As the investigations go on Barton discovers a history of similar fires in the area over many years.

DI Barton is a copper who is different to the usual coppers that I would usually read about. I do love how the author integrates Bartons' home life into each of the books. He is more of a 'normal' copper and I do like that.

There isn't just the fire killer case going on, as always there is another disturbing story that involves drugs. As Ross Greenwood always does he has seamlessly spunthese threads into one excellently woven web of a story that has no lack of twists, turns and suspense.

It is a disturbing, dark read at times that does conclude in a way that no-one escapes from. There is also a lot of dark humour running through it as well. One thing I can appreciate is dark humour, not too sure what that says about me though! I really enjoyed guessing, wrongly, who the fire killer was. It truly threw me when I got to find out. Another excellent instalment that I recommend everybody should read.

Thanks to Rachels Random Resources,
Boldwood Books and NetGalley.

The Fire Killer is the first book I’ve read by Ross Greenwood and although it is the fifth in his DI Barton series I was immediately drawn into the story and quickly got to know the members of Barton’s team. Therefore I can reassure readers like myself who are new to the series that The Fire Killer can definitely be read as a standalone.

I liked the book’s structure. There’s an exciting opening scene that describe the events leading up to the culmination of the case before a shift back in time to a pivotal incident from ‘many years ago’. From that point on the story switches between Barton’s painstaking investigation into a series of cases of arson and the first person narrative of The Fire Killer. We know their background, witness their actions and the impulses that drive them but don’t know their identity. I had plenty of ideas but, thanks to the skill of the author, it wasn’t until near the end of the book that I finally twigged.

I really liked the relationship between Barton and Detective Sergeant Zander. They have a nice line in banter and bounce ideas off each other, contributing their different views of the investigation. It’s an investigation which, as Zander ruefully observes, turns out to be ‘an onion case’ with many layers each more bizarre than the last. In fact, as events unfold and they are left with more questions than answers, they wonder if they are investigating one case or two.

The investigation takes place against the backdrop of the Covid-19 lockdown. The empty streets and closed up shops create a real sense of atmosphere. And, as Barton observes, ‘Mankind didn’t need a virus to behave deplorably’. The book includes a number of damaged characters – there is one in particular who stands out – as well as individuals only too willing to feed off the vulnerabilities of others.

Barton comes across as an ‘old school’ policeman who’s grudgingly accepted that technology now plays a significant part in the detection of crime but regrets it takes some of the challenge out of it. The author gives us a neat in-joke when he has Barton despair at the difference between ‘real’ policing and what you see in TV dramas (or some crime fiction perhaps?). ‘A detective was sitting in a van, typing away at a computer, pulling up a variety of individuals’ call histories and credit-card statements. It was pure bullshit.’

I enjoyed the glimpses of Barton’s home life. The book sees him pondering his future given the toll his work has taken on him: the long hours, the missed family events. Equally, the dreadful things he has witnessed. Indeed, he will witness more in the course of this case. ‘He was proud to be a policeman, but he also knew he couldn’t do it forever, because each death left a mark.’ On the other hand, he recognises that his family’s love and support has provided a vital counterbalance. ‘When death surrounds you, life took on new meaning.’

The Fire Killer is an ingenious, well-crafted crime novel that kept me absorbed until the very last page.

This is the fifth book in the DC Barton series, easily read as a standalone.

The story is told from both the Fire Killer and Bartons's POV, the plotline is gripping, compelling and exciting. Greenwood takes us on a fast paced journey into the underworld where we venture into the life of a pyromaniac, and drug abuse.

I love Barton and I can't wait to see where his next case takes us. The secondary characters are well developed, flawed and all harbouring their own secrets.

Many thanks to Rachel's Random Resources for my tour spot.

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The story:
When DI Barton and the team are called to investigate the death of a woman in a skip fire, it at first seems like a terrible accident. But as the investigation progresses, the picture only becomes more complicated. With the possible involvement of drug gangs, a list of potential suspects who all seem to have something to hide, and the unknown arsonist taking increasingly desperate risks, will Barton and the team be able to find the Fire Killer before any more lives are lost?

My thoughts:
Last year I was lucky enough to join the blog tour for the “The Cold Killer”, introducing me to DI Barton and the team for the first time. It’s great to find a new crime author to add to my list of favourites, and I jumped at the chance to review this latest book in the series.

“The Fire Killer” is another book of twists and turns, with the identity of the killer keeping me guessing until near the end. The author is great at throwing believable red herrings into the mix, and keeping the action moving at a fast pace. Most of the story is told from the perspective of DI Barton, but we also get an insight into the backstory and thoughts of the Fire Killer themselves, which added another side to their seemingly reckless crimes.

As I mentioned in my review of “The Cold Killer”, Barton himself is a very likeable lead, and his trusty team are beside him again to bring the killer to justice. This is another great, pacy crime read, and I look forward to the (apparently final) next instalment, “The Santa Killer”!

I was hooked into this one straight away. An intriguing timeline, a modern commentary on policing and urban life in general during a pandemic, and a softer look at the commitments and dedication of a police officer.

DI Barton thinks he might be dealing with a pyromaniac, but as we are told “You know what arson is like. Fire doesn’t leave many clues behind.” Therefore, this is a complex case to unravel with very few leads, and it takes professionalism and perseverance from DI Barton and his team to try and crack the case.

It really didn’t seem to matter that I have never read from this series before, as I immediately warmed to Barton. In true Ross Greenwood style, the story is full of realism, humour and shows the humanity and family life of DI Barton.

As danger comes closer and closer, and the case becomes more urgent, I became more and more invested in this story and willed for an exciting, yet satisfying conclusion. I loved hearing from “The Fire Killer’s” point of view, giving an engaging voice to those who are often branded as the faceless “evil” members of our society and community.

Overall, an engaging and gripping book which I have really enjoyed. For many years, I loved crime thrillers, but of late they have fallen by the wayside. Books like Ross’ re-ignite my love, and need, for books from this genre on my shelf.

I have really enjoyed previous Ross Greenwood novels so I was exited to pick up The Fire Killer! I’m happy to report, I wasn’t disappointed. This is the 5th book in this series, and while it can be read as a standalone, this author is great, so why not add them all to your TBR!

I think one of my favorite aspects of this novel is how human the characters are. They are detectives, and as someone who doesn’t work in the criminal investigation field, it was really nice to see these detectives as humans, with humor and families just like everyone else.

There are quite a few twists and turns, and Ross Greenwood doesn’t make guessing who the killer is easy! I really enjoyed this one and would recommend giving it a read! Looking forward to more from this author.