The pensive, beautifully understated cover of DESPERATE MEASURES draws you in, even if you are unfamiliar with the first two volumes of what might be called the Hazel Best series. While the canon began with DEADLY VIRTUES in 2013, only four months have passed in the series. But what a four months it has been.

Hazel Best, a Norbold, England police recruit, has sustained a career-interrupting injury, made the acquaintance of a street urchin, and become friends with Gabriel Ash, a troubled government official whose wife and young sons disappeared four years ago. Near the conclusion of PERFECT SINS, Ash learns that his family is still alive, though in very dire straits as they are in the custody of Somali pirates. And thus begins the most ambitious book in the series thus far.

"[I]t is the characters, particularly the villains of the piece, that will make you want to settle down and read the book during the closing days of the year."

DESPERATE MEASURES is actually two novels, in a sense, one wrapped around the other. Saturday, a street kid who has been befriended by Hazel and Ash, shows up with a laptop computer that he says he “found.” The laptop belongs to a highly influential local builder. Hazel passes it on to the Norbold Police Department, which returns the unit to its rightful owner. But Saturday subsequently tells Hazel about some highly surprising material that he found hidden on the computer’s hard drive, leading Hazel to wonder how to best deal with what appears to be evidence, now long gone, of potentially criminal activity of the worst sort.

Meanwhile, Ash receives a cryptic message from his family’s captors. The pirates, in return for the release of the Ash family, demand that Ash kill himself online. He feels that he has no choice but to do so, with the event being broadcast in real time. The Ash family is released, worse for wear, but safe.

Then things really start to unravel. Bannister begins loading up the china cabinet near the beginning of the book and then kicks the whole kit and kaboodle down three or so flights of stairs, upending everything (well, almost everything) that she has established in Hazel’s world. It’s not fair to reveal much more than that, but note that surprises abound, particularly in the book’s last half, where the reader starts stepping on the bouncing betties that Bannister has ever so carefully been burying in the preceding pages. By the conclusion, most questions that Bannister has set up over the course of the three books have been answered, but not all are resolved.

I had originally thought that Bannister was setting up a trilogy for Hazel Best. Upon the conclusion of DESPERATE MEASURES, it’s possible that at least one additional book in the series will be published, though not necessarily probable. You may well guess some of the hooks and twists that occur over the course of this series, but only the best will figure them all out before things (most things, anyway) are settled. Regardless, it is the characters, particularly the villains of the piece, that will make you want to settle down and read the book during the closing days of the year.