Another solid if unspectacular detective novel, the first of the novels featuring LAPD detective Michael Gideon and his police dog Sirius. They are both recovering from a horrific burning, as they brought a serial murderer out of a flaming canyon. In a Hannibal / Clarissa like twist, he gets to visit the serial murderer on death's row in San Quentin to probe his psyche. And in a very The Following kind of way, the serial killer seems to be manipulating folks on the outside to mess with Gideon.

While all this goes on, he has to solve 2 mysteries - who killed a dead baby (bringing up his own orphan beginnings) and who crucified a high schooler.

It's all a bit pedestrian, although the dog interactions are, of course, wonderful. Sirius does come in for some deus ex machina usage, though, which is annoying. Other annoying traits of the book are dreams/nightmares that open the way for "special insights" and the habit of a first person narrative to suddenly hide information from the reader that the narrator knows. And I did have to flip back to figure out just who the hell Simeon zeroed in on as the high school killer, having totally lost track of this character many chapters before. It would have been nice if he could have said both his name and who the heck he was, before dashing head long, once again, into an inferno.

I already have the second book, [b:Guardians of the Night|23117777|Guardians of the Night (Gideon and Sirius, #2)|Alan Russell|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1416259617s/23117777.jpg|42667396], on my tablet, so I'll give that a read but otherwise I'm not particularly enamoured with it.