Deadly plunge

The Flight, by MR Hall, Mantle, RRP£12.99, 320 pages

As premises go, this one’s a killer; a gigantic Airbus A380 crashes into the icy waters of the Severn Estuary, but it appears that one young passenger who washes up on the shore survived the crash only to die later. A boat carrying a lone sailor also appears to have been sunk by the faltering airliner.

The coroner starts asking questions that extend beyond her remit: how could the computerised A380 have failed? And could there be another connection between the crash and the death of a 10-year-old girl?

This is coroner Jenny Cooper’s fourth outing. She was in poor shape to begin with, a newly divorced bundle of nerves on anti-depressants, but this time she gets tangled up with big business as well as the establishment, so the stakes are even higher.

It’s a terrific series, meticulously researched, sharply plotted and peopled with sympathetic characters, led by Cooper, who is always aware of the human consequences of failure.