Not everyone is impressed by Keighley-based Lesley Horton’s take on contemporary Bradford life in her Inspector Handford crime novels.

One writer I know likened her inclusion of prostitution, drugs and racial tension (as well as murder) to a kind of writing-by-numbers or box-ticking.

I didn’t agree. Apart from a slight tendency to political correctness here and there – mainly to keep troubled copper Chris Warrender in his place – the four previous Handford thrillers were full of interest and intrigue to me – an irregular reader of crime thrillers and not a fan of what may be called localism.

A story set in Bradford by a Bradford writer doesn’t guarantee that it will be worth buying and reading, and believe me there is more of it than you think, usually by people who now live well out of the way – Greater Manchester, Oxfordshire.

Lesley Horton at least still lives in the district – Utley, just outside Keighley.

She knows what the issues are, she knows the environment and the landscape. She has also been stabbed – in the shoulder – by a recalcitrant pupil. Her books, to date, have been an exception to the run-of-the-mill crime thrillers that I have seen over the past few years. I was hoping that Twisted Tracks would follow the tradition she has created.

The book, which contains a mock Keighley News story, is built on three murders, a suicide, the escape of a burglar with violent tendencies, a car insurance scam and – something completely new, as far as I am aware – a spot of bother between John Handford his brother Douglas.

I may have missed something in one of the previous four Handford thrillers – Snares Of Guilt, On Dangerous Ground, Devils In The Mirror and The Hollow Core – but I don’t recollect the detective chief inspector having a brother, a social services chief executive no less.

Douglas comes into it because as a student 30 years before he had sex with an under-age girl who subsequently claimed to have been raped before she killed herself.

Although he vehemently denies the rape, Douglas fears that sex with a 15-year-old could still be enough to smash his career.

Meanwhile, the battered and stabbed body of former police officer Tom Blakely is found in the same Keighley mine shaft as the body of missing Bronwyn Price.

Her step-father has been running a dodgy financial scam, while her former lover, a Polish immigrant, is running scared of the car insurance scammers.

And then 96-year-old pensioner Annie Laycock is found kicked and stabbed to death in her home. Could this killing and the killing of Tom Blakely be linked with the disappearance from open prison of the repulsive Ian Gott?

Poor old John Handford’s life doesn’t appear to have got any easier since becoming boss of West Yorkshire Police’s Homicide and Major Enquiry Team.

Detective Inspector Khalid Ali’s impetuosity still rankles at times, and for most of the book Gill Handford is away teaching in the United States, leaving her husband like a grumpy Inspector Wexford.

I found I was longing for exposure to the abrasive Chris Warrander. Ever since reaching a rapprochement with DI Ali in the second or third book, he has been less of a dramatic presence.

Unlike Handford, Warrander does not go through life taking part in a dialogue with his inner self. He is easily one of Lesley Horton’s best character achievements in these books.

My feeling is that there is perhaps at least one twisted track too many in this book.

The details of past and present investigations clog the narrative in parts. I found myself not really caring if lines of inquiry had been carried out correctly.

That is why, a little less than halfway through, I wondered if the Handford series had reached its sell-by date.

It happens. Conan Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes, his most famous creation, because he was bored. And Ian Rankin, after ten Inspector Rebus novels, retired the jazz-loving outsider.