‘Dead Alone’ by Gay Longworth

Published by HarperCollins,
2002.
ISBN: 978-0-00-713958-6

Jessie Driver, a motorbike riding female police officer loves being back in London at West End Central. The youngest DI on the Area Major Investigation Team, responsible for a large proportion of Central London. It does of course have its downside, in the guise of Mark Ward, her professional equal, and her personal opposite. Life, however, is good for Jessie, sharing a flat with Maggie Hall, TV presenter, gets her invited to some fun events, very different from her life at West End Central.

These lives, however, begin to merge when Maggie is trashed by one Joshua Cadell on the Ray St Giles chat show. For Ray St Giles is the man who shot an innocent passerby, Trevor Molls, during a robbery, and for which Raymond St Giles was sentenced to 16 years for manslaughter, but he has now served his time and is making his name as a chat show host. But for Clare Mills, Trevor’s daughter the nightmare still goes on, as she searches for her brother Frank who was taken into care the day of her father’s funeral and the day Clare’s mother committed suicide. Along with DCI Jones, Jessie is tasked to find Frank.

When Jessie is sent out to investigate a headless corpse washed up on the banks of the Thames, she realises that she has been set-up by her colleague DI Ward, so she decides to play it by the book. But what she suspects is a prank turns out to be very serious, when bizarre evidence points to a minor celebrity. Then other celebrity corpses turn up and Jessie is running her first murder enquiry.

When Jessie finds herself attracted by a key suspect, she puts her own life in danger,

I liked Jessie enormously but found Maggie a little irritating. I don’t want to give anything away, but the identification of the corpse was both bizarre and fascinating. It had me hooked. Recommended.
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Reviewer: Lizzie Hayes

Gay Longworth, Carrie Adams) was born in 1970. She trained as an oil trader after graduating from university. Eventually, though, her love for writing wouldn’t be ignored, and she left the job and moved to Cornwall, England, to write. Dead Alone is her first novel to be published in the United States. She is now a full-time writer in London, where she lives with her husband and daughter.