Tag: crime

#BookReview Gallowstree Lane (Collins and Griffiths #3) by Kate London @CorvusBooks

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Gallowstree LaneAbout the Book

Please don’t let me die. Please don’t. The final words of teenager Spencer Cardoso as he bleeds out on a London street, his life cut short in a single moment of rage.

Detective Inspector Kieran Shaw’s not interested in the infantry. Shaw likes the proper criminals, the ones who can plan things.  For two years he’s been painstakingly building evidence against an organized network, the Eardsley Bluds. Operation Perseus is about to make its arrests.

So when a low-level Bluds member is stabbed to death on Gallowstree Lane, Shaw’s priority is to protect his operation. An investigation into one of London’s tit-for-tat killings can’t be allowed to derail Perseus and let the master criminals go free.

But there’s a witness to the murder, fifteen-year-old Ryan Kennedy. Already caught up in Perseus and with the Bluds, Ryan’s got his own demons and his own ideas about what’s important. As loyalties collide and priorities clash, a chain of events is triggered that draws in Shaw’s old adversary DI Sarah Collins and threatens everyone with a connection to Gallowstree Lane…

Format: Hardcover (368 pages)         Publisher: Corvus
Publication date: 7th February 2019 Genre: Crime

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My Review

I haven’t read either of the previous two books in the series – Post Mortem and Death Message – but Gallowstree Lane worked perfectly well as a standalone, although when I get the chance I’d like to go back and read the first two.

Given the series title, I assumed (Sarah) Collins and (Lizzie) Griffiths were a team but in fact it turns out their paths have crossed only briefly in the course of previous cases. However, through different routes they find themselves both involved in finding the murderer of Spencer Cardoso: Sarah as Senior Investigating Officer on the case and Lizzie through the arrest of Spencer’s friend, Ryan, for a seemingly unrelated crime. The trail leads to a gang leader who is the subject of a major organized crime investigation led by Detective Inspector Kieran Shaw.

The book provides a vivid picture of gang culture and how young men, often from deprived backgrounds, can be drawn into drugs, petty crime and violence by manipulative individuals, with often tragic outcomes. Sadly, the latter can just become one more statistic, or a brief mention in a newspaper. As Sarah observes, ‘The specifics of the dead boys did not generally capture the public’s imagination. These were, in the main one-act dramas and not very good ones either; no complication, no twist to make them interesting, no learning for the persons involved.’ In some respects, Detective Inspector Shaw shares this view but only because he is single-mindedly focused on the major operation he is running. ‘His business was to catch the proper bad guys.’

I think it shows the skill of the author to make Ryan, the witness to the murder of his friend, in any way a sympathetic character. He’s a young man traumatised by what he saw and plagued with guilt for running away.  He finds himself in a situation he can’t control and is pitifully loyal to those who view him in reality as no more than a useful tool in their criminal enterprises.

The book contains meticulous detail about police procedure, no doubt gleaned from the author’s time in the Metropolitan Police Service: the extensive paperwork, the often repetitive tasks, the painstaking attention to detail, the frustration when progress is slow, the black humour, and the adrenaline rush of the sudden breakthrough when ‘the trance of assessment and action that every police officer learns’ takes over. I liked the way the book shows the impact of the role on officers’ personal lives, whether that’s the long shifts, the unsocial hours or the traumatic scenes that linger long in the memory. And, as the story progresses we see just how much of a multi-disciplinary effort an investigation can be and what impact the use of modern technology can make (although it may make you more on the look out for CCTV cameras as you stroll down your local street).

I thought Gallowstree Lane was a cracking police procedural. It kept me hooked until the final pages and I’m only sorry it’s taken me so long to get around to reading it.

My thanks to Corvus for my review copy via Readers First. Gallowstree Lane is the final book in my 20 Books of Summer 2021. Phew, made it!

In three words: Gritty, compelling, authentic

Try something similar: Payback (DI Charley Mann #1) by R.C. Bridgestock

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Kate London 1 credit Tim FlachAbout the Author

Kate joined the Metropolitan Police Service in 2006. She finished her career working as part of a Major Investigation Team on the Metropolitan Police Service’s Homicide Command. She now writes full time. (Photo credit: Publisher author page)

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#BookReview The Late Train to Gipsy Hill by Alan Johnson @Wildfirebks

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The Late Train to Gipsy HillAbout the Book

Gary Nelson has a routine for the commute to his rather dull job in the city. Each day, he watches as a woman on the train applies her make up in a ritual he now knows by heart. He’s never dared to strike up a conversation…but maybe one day.

Then one evening, on the late train to Gipsy Hill, the woman invites him to take the empty seat beside her. Fiddling with her mascara, she holds up her mirror and Gary reads the words ‘HELP ME’ scrawled in sticky black letters on the glass.

From that moment, Gary’s life is turned on its head. He finds himself on the run from the Russian mafia, the FSB and even the Metropolitan Police – all because of what this mysterious young woman may have witnessed. In the race to find out the truth, Gary discovers that there is a lot more to her than meets the eye . . .

Format: eARC (352 pages)                     Publisher: Wildfire Books
Publication date: 2nd September 2021 Genre: Thriller

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My Review

I’m a great fan of Alan Johnson, both as a former politician and as an author of a fabulous series of memoirs – This Boy, Please, Mr Postman, and The Long and Winding Road. For those who don’t know or haven’t guessed from the titles, he’s a lifelong fan of The Beatles. When I heard him speak at Henley Literary Festival in 2018 about his then recently published book, In My Life: A Music Memoir, he mentioned that his next book was likely to be fiction, probably historical fiction. He obviously decided to switch genre because The Late Train to Gipsy Hill fulfils all the requirements of a crime thriller with its intricate plot, cast of shady characters and frequent action scenes.

The storyline couldn’t be more up-to-date either, set in a London in which football clubs are owned by rich Russians while their fellow countrymen use the buying and selling of property as a way of laundering dirty money. As the author notes, ‘Amongst the Russian criminal fraternity, London had become known as the world’s laundromat, washing billions of pounds of dirty cash every year‘.

Through a chivalrous act of kindness towards a damsel in distress, poor Gary, the book’s hero, finds himself plunged into a world in which Russian secret service agents, with or without the knowledge of the Russian President, may be carrying out killings in a particularly dangerous way (echoes of the real life murder of Alexander Litvinenko). At the same time, rival gangs of criminals engaged in prostitution, drug and people smuggling, fight for precedence.

If, like Gary, you’re in danger of becoming confused by the twists and turns of the plot – of which there are many – as well as the many Russian characters with difficult to pronounce names, the author thoughtfully provides periodic recaps of the events that have taken place. However, also like Gary, you’ll have to wait until the very end to get the whole picture.

The book contains convincing detail about the structure and operations of the intelligence services and the Metropolitan Police no doubt gleaned from the author’s time as Home Secretary. I just hope that some of what Gary discovers doesn’t hold true in real life. There’s also an impressive knowledge of the London Underground and bus network on display, and even a fleeting role for a vehicle linked to one of the author’s former occupations.

At the Henley Literary Festival event I mentioned earlier, Alan said one of the reasons he wanted to turn to fiction was because he relished the idea of being able to control plot and characters, something not possible in non-fiction. In The Late Train to Gipsy Hill he has certainly demonstrated the ability to craft an intricate plot. During his talk, Alan also paid tribute to the English teacher who first encouraged him to write so it was lovely to see the dedication to, I assume, the same teacher at the beginning of the book.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Late Train to Gipsy Hill and thought it was an impressive debut. Alan is just one of the fantastic selection of authors appearing at this year’s Henley Literary Festival. His event, like many others, will also be live-streamed so if you can’t get there in person you can still listen to Alan talk about the book. At the time of writing, tickets are still available and can be booked via the Henley Literary Festival website.

In three words: Ingenious, convincing, assured

Try something similar: Killing State by Judith O’Reilly

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alan johnsonAbout the Author

Alan Johnson’s childhood memoir This Boy was published in 2013. It won the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, and the Orwell Prize, Britain’s top political writing award. His second volume of memoirs, Please, Mr Postman (2014) won the National Book Club award for Best Biography. The final book in his memoir trilogy, The Long And Winding Road (2016), won the Parliamentary Book Award for Best Memoir.

Alan was a Labour MP for 20 years before retiring ahead of the 2017 general election. He served in five cabinet positions in the Governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown including Education Secretary, Health Secretary and Home Secretary. He and his wife Carolyn live in East Yorkshire. (Photo/bio credit: Publisher author page)

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Top Ten Tuesday About A Boy Please Mr Postman The Long and Winding Road