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Daniel Wright is a cop specialising in the recovery of stolen artworks who has a chip on his shoulder the size of the Uffizi. On a job in Calabria, Daniel is shown, by a mobster, Caravaggio’s 1609 painting ‘Nativity with St Francis and St Lawrence’, which was stolen in 1969 from the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo. Back in Italy on another assignment a few months later, Daniel decides to go after the ‘Nativity’ alone.

‘A working-class hero was always something I wanted to be and this was my chance.’ With the help of the beautiful Francesca, a curator, Daniel immerses himself in the haughty world of Mafia art theft, following random leads from Florence to Naples and, finally, back to Calabria, where he comes face to face with the harsh truth of his own glaring amateurism. All the ingredients for a classic thriller are here in subverted form. The tough man who isn’t tough enough; the greasy mobsters, who exhibit the qualities of patience and refinement Daniel lacks; the lovely wife at home in London, who isn’t exactly pining for his return.

Botched plans, long waits and the sudden switching off of Francesca’s love for Daniel lend this book the kind of gritty realism that has made John Le Carré’s spy novels so intriguing to those of us who don’t read genre fiction.

Admirable for its depiction of the complex psychological landscape of the criminal underworld, Griffiths’ occasionally overwritten second novel shows how thriller fiction has evolved from the early blueprints of fast-paced action, brutish villains and formal delineations between good and evil, yet retains some of its hardboiled charm.