‘Think of the Children’ by Kerry Wilkinson

Published by Pan,
28 February 2012.
ISBN: 978-1-4472-2340-5

I was looking forward to reading this book for two reasons - I had read of the author’s success in self-publishing as e-books and I knew that he set his books in the Manchester area.  So here we have a female Detective Sergeant called Jessica Daniel who is first on the scene when a car crashes on her route to work.   The shock for her is not really finding that the driver is dead but discovering the body of a child wrapped in plastic in the car boot.

           

The tale develops from this exciting beginning as the case becomes one of child abductions stretching back into the past.   Jessica is a feisty heroine and I was immediately interested in what made her tick as a detective and a woman.  Other characters around her are well delineated as she grapples with the mystery.  There were clever twists as the story developed and a satisfactory conclusion.  The local background was good too.

           

Returning to my initial comment about self-publishing as e-books I do wonder if this is the way things are going; after all the 50 Shades of Grey books were e-books at first. 

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Reviewer: Jennifer Palmer

Kerry Wilkinson is something of an accidental author. His debut, Locked In, was written as a challenge to himself but, after self-publishing, it became a UK number one bestseller within three months of release. His three initial Jessica Daniel books sold over 300,000 copies through word-of-mouth, making him Amazon's UK No.1 author for the final quarter of 2011, its biggest-ever sales period. In February 2012, he agreed a six-book deal with Pan Macmillan for the Jessica Daniel books. In October 2012, it was announced the same publisher had also bought a sci-fi/fantasy/adventure series - the Silver Blackthorn trilogy - which will start to be released in October/November 2013.

Jennifer Palmer Throughout my reading life crime fiction has been a constant interest; I really enjoyed my 15 years as an expatriate in the Far East, the Netherlands & the USA but occasionally the solace of closing my door to the outside world and sitting reading was highly therapeutic. I now lecture to adults on historical topics including Famous Historical Mysteries.