‘No Place Left’ by Sean Watkin

Published by Canelo Crime,
17 September 2026.
ISBN: 978-1 835981-34-4 (PB)

A dead, new-born baby is discovered on Southport Pier. The baby’s teenage mother, Beatrice Tredwell, who had escaped from a secure mental health facility three weeks previously, is found alive on the beach. Sadly, Beatrice dies in hospital, but not before the Merseyside detectives DCI Winifred de Silva and DS Ben Barclay learn that she had been horrifically abused. As they start to investigate, it transpires that the deaths of Beatrice and her baby could well be a continuation of previous crimes related to abuse at a boy’s school and the sinister Woulds app – its contents were never explained. These earlier crimes had been associated with two rogue police colleagues, O’Brien and Crosby, both of whom are now in prison.  De Silva visits them.  Neither offers any useful information, though both succeed in arousing De Silva’s worries about her dead father’s knowledge of the earlier abuses. 

Investigations continue until the unthinkable happens. DS Barclay’s young daughter, Sarah, is abducted from an enclosed play zone that Barclay, his husband Nick, and one of Nick’s friends had taken her to and were supposedly keeping a watchful eye on her.  Sarah was not the first young girl to go missing, but she seems to have been one of the first that anybody really cared about. A huge hunt begins for Sarah and her abductors. Ben and Nick were nearly driven out of their minds with worry, particularly after the searches revealed an app redolent of the earlier Woulds app, on Sarah’s tablet. To make matters worse, it emerges that, neither historically nor in the present, children weren’t the only ones who had suffered in this abuse saga. Adults connected with missing children had been viciously murdered. 

No place left is a well written book – possible too well written. So well does it convey the anguish, mostly mental, but also physical, that besets the characters who have to deal with the abhorrent features of child sex abuse, that it would take a hard-hearted person not to become affected by the detectives’ problems, both professional and personal. De Silva seems to be still burdened with PTSD following the suicide of her husband, whilst Ben Barclay is depressed and is struggling with the failure of his marriage that had floundered even before his beloved daughter was abducted.  This is the third, and very dark, book of a trilogy. I haven’t read the first two, but I suspect that they, too, would be full of the anguish and distress so tellingly expressed in No Place Left.  If you can cope with the subject matter and the suffering of the dedicated professionals as they struggling to uncover and punish the unspeakable horrors committed by individuals and gangs who abuse young children that is so brilliantly portrayed by Sean Watkin, then No Place Left will be an excellent read for you.
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Reviewer Angela Crowther 

Sean Watkin was born and raised in Liverpool and studied a BA and MA in Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University. He has been shortlisted for Fresher Writing Award, Book a Break Prize and Bristol Short Story Prize. His writing has been featured in The Gay UK magazine, and The Content Wolf e-zine, as well as other LGBT+ publications. Sean lives in Liverpool with his partner. His debt novel Black Water Rising was published in April 2025.

Angela Crowther is a retired scientist.  She has published many scientific papers but, as yet, no crime fiction.  In her spare time Angela belongs to a Handbell Ringing group, goes country dancing and enjoys listening to music, particularly the operas of Verdi and Wagner.