Published by Pam Macmillan, 18 July 2013.
ISBN: 978-1-4472-2341-2
When Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel is assigned
to escort a newly-released arsonist, Martin Chadwick, from prison it should
have been a simple task. However, somebody has alerted the media and Jessica
has to smuggle Chadwick out of prison by hiding with him in the back of a van.
In close proximity, Jessica gets to talk to Martin Chadwick and to listen to
him. Although she has been a police officer long enough to feel cynical about
criminals' protestations of remorse, Jessica finds that she believes Chadwick
when he says how guilty he feels about setting the fire that killed a teenager,
sleeping rough in the abandoned building. And also how sorry he is for what his
seven years of imprisonment had done to his own son, Ryan, who had been taken
into Social Services care.
Delivering Chadwick to his home, Jessica
meets Ryan, an angry, bitter and confused eighteen-year-old. She is
increasingly concerned by the way the media, led by local reporter Sebastian
Lowe, is stirring up the simmering anger between the Martin and Ryan Chadwick
and the dead teenager's father, Anthony Thompson. According to the newspapers,
Thompson has uttered veiled threats against Chadwick. Her fears prove justified
when Martin Chadwick's house is the subject of a graffiti attack and later
gutted by fire.
In a separate case a teenage girl commits
suicide. The events that follow indicate that the cases must be linked. Jessica
and her colleagues struggle to untangle the events, to the background of media
speculation, orchestrated by the charismatic Sebastian Lowe. Not for the first
time in her career, Jessica bends the rules, this time by enlisting the help of
Andrew Hunter, a Private Investigator. Before the cases are solved, the lives
of Jessica and her fiancé, Adam, are in peril, and Jessica has to decide
exactly what should have priority in her life.
Playing With Fire is a fast-paced police procedural, with a feisty,
female protagonist. The strands of the various cases are intriguing and neatly
woven to provide a satisfactory conclusion. Two themes run through the book:
one is parental love and parental responsibility and the hideous sense of loss
and helplessness when parents fail to keep their children safe. The other theme
is fire and its aftermath, which is described in vivid, sensory detail.
Playing With Fire is the fifth book in the series featuring Jessica
Daniel, but stands by itself, with just enough detail to inform new readers of
Jessica's back-story and her relationships. It is a very enjoyable read.
------
Reviewer: Carol
Westron
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.
Carol Westron is a successful short story writer and a Creative
Writing teacher. She is the moderator
for the cosy/historical crime panel, The Deadly Dames. Her crime novels are set both in contemporary
and Victorian times. The Terminal
Velocity of Cats is the first in her Scene of Crimes novels, published July
2013.
No comments:
Post a Comment