Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“He runs into the flames a hero. He emerges from the ashes a suspect.”

I. CANNOT. COPE. WITH. THIS. BOOK. My head, my heart, my eyes. Gaz has done it again and written another gut-wrenching, absorbing, completely addictive second novel to rival his debut of 2024. Into The Fire is everything I wanted it to be and more! I’m completely hungover from this 😅 Insanely proud of you for nailing this one, Gaz! So thrilled to be sharing my review ahead of its release in June – everyone will be talking about this one!

About the book

Steve thought he had left his troubled past behind. Living a quiet life with his wife and children, everything changes the night he rescues a baby from a burning house, becoming an unexpected national hero.

But as the spotlight shines brighter, so does the scrutiny, and a shocking accusation is made – that Steve is the man responsible for an unsolved murder in Beachbrook years prior.

As DS Willmott investigates the truth, Steve pleads his innocence. But as Steve’s world unravels, he faces a terrifying truth: the past isn’t done with him yet. And when everything he loves is at risk, he’ll be forced to make an impossible choice.

After all, even heroes hide secrets of their own.

The beginning

With the prologue in After The Storm being one of the most intense, inside-squeezing, heart-pounding openings to a book I think I’ve ever read, I wasn’t sure whether G.D. Wright’s second book could hit me in the gut quite so hard. Turns out, it could – but in a whole new way. This time, I felt a deep sense of dread, of fear, of a kind of numbness that I can’t really describe. The feeling of knowing death is lingering. That something horrific has happened. I completely love DS Sue Willmott as a character, so, despite the circumstances, it felt really good to read about her again. In that opening, we feel every single feeling that flows through her, and of course, that’s due to completely remarkable descriptions and atmosphere building. Absolute perfection, once again. Heading back to Beachbrook felt bittersweet. There was such a nice familiarity of being back here, but after everything we experienced in After The Storm, there was still a dark cloud looming over this town. It felt like a somewhat cursed town, despite its friendly people, it’s nostalgic seaside town feel we all know and love. The contrast was quite something and I just adored it.

“His time was running out. He had days. A couple at most. Before everything crashed and burned.”

In this book, we follow Steve – a family man with a beautiful wife, Sarah, and two adorable kids. He owns a coffee shop on the harbour and is basically living his best seaside life. But on one rare night out with friends, the group stumble across the most horrific scene; a house fire, with people still inside. There was no time to breathe as I read about Steve’s heroic acts, how he raced into that house without really thinking about it to do all he could. The descriptions were so vivid and immersive, so incredibly gripping and downright terrifying. In my eyes, these are the kind of scenes that this author excels at writing. The absolute best. The kind of scenes where looking away or taking a break is not an option. His words have you in a chokehold and do not let you go. It really is quite the experience! After finding a baby in the house, he finally manages to get them both to safety in the nick of time, but there were other fatalities in that house. These were probably the most heartbreaking, intense scenes I’ve read since I read After The Storm! Being hailed a hero, as Steve was, does have its disadvantages though, especially when you have your own secrets…

The middle

I was obsessed with Kevin, a character whose POV we follow alongside Steve, Sarah and DS Willmott. His story was a sad one; he lost his daughter, Charlotte, years ago, but he still stayed in Beachbrook for that closeness. That sense of familiarity. The circumstances surrounding her death was still a mystery to him all these years later, but he was still determined to get to the truth. The case affected DS Willmott so much she named her own daughter after Charlotte. And could Steve’s past, the secrets he keeps, have something to do with her, too? Charlotte’s connection to so many characters fascinated me, and the more we learn, the more we realise Steve is in trouble. After being in the spotlight for being ‘the hero who saved a baby from a burning building’, his past catches up with him. The build up to his inevitable arrest was so intricately written, and I was so curious about what happened. He was a suspect now, in an old murder investigation. He couldn’t have killed a young girl, surely?! DS Willmott’s digging into such a high profile case from the past was so gripping and all-consuming. The author’s deep police knowledge ties all this together in a neat bow and makes everything feel so real. Completely flawless.

“Demons, outside. Torment, within. No matter where he looked, physically or otherwise, all he could see was raging injustice, and it was eating away at his soul.”

As well as all these perfectly developed characters, I thought the introduction of Fiona, a journalist looking for a story after Steve’s fame, was such a perfect addition at the perfect time, something to really stir the pot, to make Steve, the police, and us readers sweat a bit. Initially, she felt like bad news. Just how would she use Steve’s past against him to get the perfect angle for a story? What other secrets would she uncover about his life? I loved snippets of paragraphs back in the day of Charlotte’s murder. These short flashbacks really deepened the plot and had me thinking of a time when Charlotte’s murder was so fresh in everyone’s minds, how DS Willmott (then a PC) coped with such a horrific case, how it became burned in her brain. In the present day, Steve is experiencing a living nightmare, his perfect little family, his great life crumbling before his very eyes. He still can’t process what happened all those years ago. He can’t think about it. As a potential solution, he decides to travel back to where he grew up, to where it happened, in order to try and make sense of it. To save his family. To tell them the truth.

The end

We learn so much more about Steve’s childhood, if you can even call it a childhood. The horrific abuse he’d endured, the lack of love from his parents, the reasons he ran away. The were so many intricate layers to this character, and over time, I felt like I knew him personally, that I could see into the deepest, darkest corners of his mind. There was so much trauma he was never able to recover from. All he could do over time was to lock it away in his mind and throw away the key. Absolutely phenomenal writing and character creation. And it just continued to impress me with each passing chapter. It was heartbreaking and anger-inducing in equal measure. I could feel there was something being kept from us about Steve’s story, though. Something very significant. I became suspicious of new characters, only a little at first and certainly not enough to draw together a conclusion. We see destruction, a link to those terrifying first chapters, something to send Steve a message, to shake him to his core, to get some form of revenge. But he has a plan, a plan to put things right. And it was a lot.

“The peace that he’d always found there? Forever tainted. That unique tranquillity? Forever fouled, forever polluted. It had changed everything. How dare he. How f*cking dare he.”

The truth was revealed and god, how this twisted everything we thought we knew about that incident years and years ago. So brilliant, so unexpectedly emotional. Chapters became shorter and sharper, the pacing absolutely perfect. There was more tension building and I had no idea where things would go, how things would end for all these characters. But I could sense danger. And the ending?! Jesus christ, what a tough read. I could not have predicted such a horrific truth, but looking back, the clues were all there. I was completely floored by all the feelings; the anger, a kind of helplessness, of sadness, the shock. The author well and truly throws us off for the entirety of the book and it was so well-written. And the epilogue, could my EYES and my HEART take any more?! Hungover doesn’t even cut it with this one. It will be HUGE. Just like After The Storm, this book has a little piece of my heart. If you love police procedural crime/thriller, you will love Gary’s books. They’re full of family drama, of dilemmas, a whole lot of soul searching and so much heart. The best kinda books! Please pick this up when it releases in June, you’ll adore it!

Overall thoughts

Into The Fire is the perfect example of a tense, captivating, tightly-plotted crime drama with emotion and feeling tucked into every corner. G.D. Wright’s characters are so human, so real, and are created with such heart. Our main character, Steve, quickly goes from being hailed a hero to being a suspect in an old murder case, a case our lovable DS Willmott remembers all too well. And how everything unravels, not only throughout the case, but also as we visit Steve’s childhood and family life, is written in a way that will shock you to your core. The author is a pro at throwing us off the scent which makes those reveals all the more impactful. A true gem of an author and an unforgettable second novel under his belt. I’m not sure how he’ll manage to top this book, but I know he’ll smash it out the park with book three!

A HUGE thank you to the author, G.D. Wright, and the fabulous team at Avon Books for my very special proof copy of Into The Fire! The book releases on 5th June and you can pre-order it right now on Amazon or wherever you buy your books. Make sure you’re following the author on Instagram, Bluesky and X/Twitter for more updates!

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