Another real pager in the Max Craigie series. An Albanian gangster is in his sights and more corruption in Police Scotland. Gritty, atmospheric and so believable. Hooked from the first to the last page. Great characters and masterful story telling. A well deserved five stars and another addition to this MUST READ series.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in return for giving an honest review.

How have I never read this author before.
I first saw this on readers first and didn’t win and then applied on here and so grateful I got a copy thank you.
I’m gutted I hadn’t realised in my haste that it was book 4 of a series but one thing is for certain I’m now getting 1-3 !

Fast paced, engaging and read in a day.

Struggled with some of the words / dialect which did make me chuckle but overall a fantastic read

The plot is interesting but as this is fiction book I would like the characters to be presented deeper, more human. The beginning was very promising but later turned to just describing procedures heading to the final goal.

Another absolute cracker in the Max Craigie series.

Loved the story, loved the action and as ever I love these characters.

Great plotting as always while remaining fully believable. Also quite emotionally charged as the team track down an Albanian gangster and put an end to his trafficking young girls for prostitution.

Obviously a crime novel can be a fairly tense affair especially as in this case when it deals with child trafficking but Lancaster manages to lighten the tone with flashes of humour. As ever I love the banter between the team but also this time I had to laugh out loud at the Lewis McPhail character , a HIghland ned who talks like a gangster.

I flew through this one in more or less one sitting - roll on book 5!

Huge thanks to HQ for the chance to read an advance copy

Although this is the fourth book in the excellent Max Craigie Scottish police crime series it can be read as a stand alone. However, this series is so good it is well worth starting from the first novel.
Fast paced and a twisting and turning plot I feel the author uses his knowledge and experience to keep it believable and you on edge .
With the clever writing and the great characters I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it

Honestly this is the best (and feels like most secret /low key?) police procedural thriller around for me at the minute. Excellent characters, fresh and compelling stories and my only negative is that I finished it too quick. I’m looking forward to a bit of backstory on Janie in the next instalment (Billy next ? )

Another great book in an excellent series. The story picks up pace until its flying along and you can feel it unfolding. I couldn't put it down as I wanted to know what happened next. Highly recommended!

This is the fourth book in the DS Craigie series by author Neil Lancaster. I am both new to the series and the author and not completely sure what drew me to it but so glad I did.

Afrodita Dushku was twelve years old and been used as a drug mule for an Albanian drug gang. She was apprehended by the authorities while travelling on a train in Scotland. Now three years on she has changed her name to Affi Smith and living with a foster family where she has been able to make a fresh start. Affi loves to run and has become very good at it, but while out one day running she finds herself once again caught up with the very people she escaped from. Her foster parents assume that Affi is simply out running but in fact she is once again in the grips of the drug traffickers who want recompense for the drugs they lost when Affi was detained. They have kidnapped her and put her in a brothel in an attempt to regain their losses.
When the family realise Affi’s disappearance is more serious, the police are called and DS Max Craigie and DC Jane Calder are assigned the case. The disappearance of a missing teenager escalates to drug trafficking, prostitution and police corruption.

This was an exciting read and although I have started the series at book four I quite easily got to grips with the characters and thoroughly enjoyed it. I will be looking to read more of this series and the author in the near future. The characters were strong and sure they will get even better the more books I read in this series.

I would like to thank both Netgalley and HQ Digital for supplying a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This is the first book I have read in this series but I will definitely be looking out for the previous and future books..
I enjoyed the dynamics in the team.
A masterful tale that made me care about the characters. The suspense builds throughout the story and makes it a real page turner.
Enjoy I did

My thoughts about Neil Lancaster’s police procedural thriller 4th book in the DS Max Craigie series Blood Runs Cold, is an interesting premise. Above all, it gives the writer a strong storyline to work on. And, No question, Lancaster does it right. Neil Lancaster’s Blood Runs Cold sets off to a brisk start, with On her fifteenth birthday, trafficking victim Affi Smith goes for a run and never returns. With a new identity and secure home in the Scottish Highlands, she was supposed to be safe. With personal ties to Affis
case, DS Max Craigie joins the investigation. When he discovers other trafficking victims have disappeared in exactly the same circumstances, he knows one thing for certain there’s a leak somewhere within law- enforcement. The clock is ticking. Max must catch Affi’s kidnappers and expose the mole before anyone else goes missing. Even it if
means turning suspicions onto his own team. There is more than meets the eye and that’s the beauty of this book. It treats deceit like a heartbeat on which it throbs and thrills. Neil Lancaster’s wistfully crafted Blood Runs Cold is a compelling police procedural thriller, that also has a riveting combination of sentiment and suspense. All in all Neil Lancaster’s Blood
Runs Cold will keep you guessing what’s going to happen next, but the end result is something else, something interesting and it also has fast, incisive cutting, an anxious, edgy style and, most importantly, Lancaster has a humour about the whole thing. What I loved about the book is how DS Max Craigie investigates a missing girl’s disappearance which leads him into even darker secrets was brilliant. I would like to say a big thank you to Neil Lancaster and publishers HQ Stories, for gifting me a early review copy for me to read and review. This book has been one hell of a ride. Neil Lancaster’s Blood Runs Cold is spellbinding. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💥💥💥💥💥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

When 15 year old Affi Smith disappears without trace the local police are too busy to think that it’s anything other than a teenage girl going off on her own for a while and that she will be home soon. When it is brought to the attention of DS Max Craigie he quickly realises it is more than that. As a child, Affi was trafficked from Albania and used to carry drugs. When she was 12 she was found by the police and given a new name and a home with loving foster parents in the Scottish Highlands.
Max and his team soon find that Affi is not the only victim of trafficking to disappear after being given safety. Someone is leaking the details of where the girls are living and that someone is putting lives at risk. Max needs to find the mole and who is behind the trafficking before any more lives are destroyed.
This utterly compelling, brilliant, fast paced book is perfect if you like a good police procedural that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Another brilliant book in the DS Max Craigie series.
Set in the Scottish Highlands, Max and his colleague Janie, root out corruption within the police force. On this occasion they become involved in the disappearance of a trafficked 15 year old Albanian girl, Affie Smith.
There's lots of drama, and twists and turns, as they begin to unravel a large trafficking network and find links to police officers, immigration officials and judiciary.
Max and Janie are great characters and each book brings a fresh storyline, there's no predictable, formulaic writing from Neil Lancaster.

I love this series. Packed with action, tension and great characterisation it has everything I want from my crime fiction and more. It's almost impossible not to love the team of Max Craigie, Janie Calder, Ross Fraser and Norma Kirk. Their's is a friendship packed with banter, often quite colourful when it comes to Ross's responses to any difficult or testing situation, but always, unfalteringly, ensuring that they have each others backs in times of trouble. Add in private contractor, Barney, who matches the team for banter and smarts step for step, and we have a team I just can't get enough of. Their goal is to root our corruption from within the Police, and it seems as though they have a never ending stream of suspects to round up. In The Blood Tide, what starts out as an assist on a missing persons case, soon puts Craigie and the team in the crosshairs of a notorious criminal with potentially deadly consequences.

This story touches on several really emotive themes, those of people trafficking, forced labour and county lines drugs running. The missing girl, Affi Smith, had been taken into protective custody by the police having been rescued from her traffickers as part of a County lines operation. She's a typical teenager, and as such, and owing to limited resources in the local force, her disappearance is perhaps not given as much credence as it should have been. As readers, we are privy to the truth of what happens to Affi, witnesses to the action, but it doesn't take long for Max Craigie to work out that this is not the case of a moody teenager taking time out. As soon as he is on the case, you know Affi is going to be given the attention she deserves, but will Max's intervention come too late?

What I liked about this story is the way in which Neil Lancaster is able to give it an air of authenticity, taking readers to an often uncomfortable situation without leading us too far down a dark path. Affi's abduction is for a very specific reason, and the scenes in which she is 'prepared' for her new life of forced prostitution is difficult to read but very believable. The emotional manipulation used to control Affi, doesn't dim her sense of self, but that feeling of her fear contrasting with her defiance and determination, really worked for the story. It made me invested in Affi's plight. There is nothing too dark, nothing gratuitous about any of it, but that sense of the coldness and the almost inhuman attitudes of her captors really did get the anger brewing.

As for the man at the top of the tree, there is a calm, clinical, detachment about him which makes the skin crawl without him really having to do anything. Neil Lancaster has created that presence, that feeling of being in the company of evil, so perfectly that it adds conflict to an already taught story. There is an understated power to this story that means nothing has to really happen for the tension to grow. It is just the tone of a sentence spoken, that constant sense of threat, and the fear that drips from the minor characters that really ups the pace of the book, leading us towards a high jeopardy, edge of the seat conclusion.

If you've not read any of these books before then you really should. These are character driven stories which hold as much humour as they do tension, and there are often some real laugh out loud moments, especially in response to Ross's constant aggressive bluster. I love that Max isn't the only kick ass member of the team, and that Janie can hold her own every bit as well. They're a great pairing who keep each other on the straight and narrow, although it's clear Janie has a much bigger job on that score than Max. This case is full of misdirection and surprises, and although some reveals are more obvious that others, there are certainly aspects of the story that I didn't see coming. I read through this in a day, the pacing being absolutely spot on and the case totally gripping. Most definitely recommended.

Loved this book from first page to last and can't rate it highly enough. The main characters are well written and I love the dynamic between Max, Janie and their colleagues. If you're a fan of police procedural novels which keep you guessing until the very end then put this book on your 'must read' list now.

Another great read in the Max Craigie series. The plotting is centred around an Albanian people trafficking group and a 15 year old girl, settled in Scotland with her foster family. I liked the characterisation, very believable, and the excellent written plot. I like the author's style of writing and the touches of humour throughout, There is plenty suspense and action until the end. I think this is the best so far! A thoroughly enjoyable read which fans will love. Thanks to Net Galley for my ARC.

Thanks to HQ and NetGalley for ARC.

DS Max Craigie's wife asks him to look into the sudden disappearance of one of her clients, a promising athlete who was trafficked to Scotland a few years previously. Craigie is suspicious enough of police coverup, writing her off as a runaway, to get his boss involved to ok a review of the case.
As always in Lancaster's novels, the pace is frantic and Craigie and his team cover a lot of ground to uncover police corruption. Ian Rankin's quip of 'Jack Reacher fronting Line of Duty' is never far from the mark. The main characters and the supporting cast are well rounded and the plot unfolds at breakneck speed, with timely exploration of the human costs of trafficking, police corruption and public indifference. My only quibble is that the team are maybe just too well-resourced...
You don't have to know Craigie to enjoy this book, but you'll be seeking the others out.

This in the 4th book in the DS Max Craigie series. It is another fast paced crime thriller set in Scotland
The subject matter is quite disturbing involving the kidnapping of Affi, a young teenager who has been trafficked by a gang of ruthless criminals.

I like the way that Neil Lancaster develops his characters. He also has great skill in creating entertaining dialogue amongst the established law enforcement officers. Many of whom feature in each of the novels in the series.

This is an enjoyable police procedural story which has several twists and turns in the plot. I won't go into detail about the storyline for fear of spoiling the story. Suffice to say that Max Craigie and his team are up against some less than honest law enforcement personnelin their search for the kidnappers.

I thinthat this novel is worth reading on it's own merit. However if you are able to read the books in orderthere,is the added benefit of seeing how the different personalities of the team develop.

I give my thanks to Netgalley and HQ Digital for a copy in exchange for this review.

Max Craigie returns in Blood Runs Cold and it is a belter of a read with the action coming thick and fast.

Neil Lancaster has created a series which just seems to get better with every book and is one that I look forward to.

Don’t miss out. Get your copy today.

I love, love, love this book! Once again, Max, Ross and Janie are on the tail of bent cops! This case is about a 15 yr old trafficking victim who goes missing while out for a run on her birthday. However, there’s more to this case than meets the eye and the deeper they dig the more sinister it becomes. Afrodita was originally trafficked by an Albanian gang and used as a drug carrier but she was lucky enough to escape that life and lives in the Scottish countryside with her lovely foster parents. Till the Albanians decide to get her back. The leader of the Albanian gang goes by the nickname of The Surgeon because of the things he does to his victims. It’s a race against time to find Affi and the bent police officer or officers who are feeding information to The Surgeon!
I really enjoy the banter in the small team of Max, Ross, Janie, Norma and Barney - the freelance IT expert! I did partly guess who was corrupt but not completely.
I couldn’t put it down! It just kept me page turning late into the night!
This is book 4 in the DS Max Craigie series, if you haven’t read any of the books, I would suggest starting from the beginning to get the best out of them. However, having said that, you could read this as a standalone and still enjoy it thoroughly!
A well deserved five stars from me!
My thanks go to Neil Lancaster, the publishers and to NetGalley for an advanced e.reader copy of this book. However the views in this review are entirely my own and entirely voluntary.

A twelve year old Albanian girl is trafficked to the UK, She is rescued by the police and given a new identity and a new home with kind foster parents. She can't be totally happy because she has a young sister who is still in Albania and she fears for her safety. At the age of 15, Affie Smith as she is now known runs away for no apparent reason. After initial investigations the police come to the conclusion that she has probably run away of her own free will but nothing is further from the truth. A fast paced crime thriller and a great addition to the series