‘The Devil’s Smile’ by Daniel Sellers

Published by Allison & Busby,
21 August 2025.
ISBN: 978-0-7490-3276-0 (HB)

It is October 1995 and Adrian Brown and Sheila Hargreaves have moved on since their involvement with the infamous Lollipop Man murders.  Sheila is working on a new TV show, Yorkshire Crime Time, and has also written a book about the murders.  Adrian Brown, now a second-year student at Leeds University, is trying to get life back to normal.  Their unusual relationship means that Sheila has become fond of Adrian and she is currently waiting for his contribution to the book.  

Adrian goes out for the evening, but a violent encounter with a man he met in a club sobers him up and he knows that he has had a close call.  He watches Sheila’s programme and she reports on the murder of a young man, elements of which sound familiar to him, but it takes him a while to phone the police.  A few weeks later Sheila’s co-presenter, Tony Tranter, goes missing.  When his body is found, Sheila presents the appeal programme.  As information about Tony’s private life becomes available and rumours abound, shocking his family and friends, Adrian and Sheila find themselves working together again. 

The plot holds the attention as the different strands interweave and unravel.  Sheila and Adrian are of course, central to the story and hold their own against other strong characters from the police, press and family.  The pace of the story changes throughout, but the tension remains, encouraging the reader to try just one more chapter.  The ending is neat and surprising.  The book is the second in the series but works well as a stand-alone. 
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Review: Jo Hesslewood 

Daniel Sellers grew up in Yorkshire. He has lived and worked in Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, and Vaasa in Finland. Daniel loves crime fiction, old and new, particularly the work of Margaret Murphy, Mo Hayder, Ruth Rendell, P. D. James and Josephine Tey. He is a huge (if not obsessive!) fan of Agatha Christie. Daniel's detective thrillers are pacy and dark, with as much interest in whydunit as who. He now lives in Argyll with his partner. 

Jo Hesslewood.  Crime fiction has been my favourite reading material since as a teenager I first spotted Agatha Christie on the library bookshelves.  For twenty-five years the commute to and from London provided plenty of reading time.  I am fortunate to live in Cambridge, where my local crime fiction book club, Crimecrackers, meets at Heffers Bookshop .  I enjoy attending crime fiction events and currently organise events for the Margery Allingham Society.