‘Tick Tock’ by Mel Sherratt.

Published by Avon,
2 May 2019.
ISBN: 978-0-00-827107-7 (PB)

This is the second book in the DS Grace Allendale, police procedural series set in Stoke.

A sixteen -year -old schoolgirl is found murdered on a school field outing. The killer did the deed in a matter of minutes.

As the whole school goes into mourning DS Grace Allendale arrives to try to find the murderer. Emotions are high, parents are angry, and pupils are in shock, as the killing of this teenager was in her own school grounds. Many questions need answers.

Within days another woman, with no connection to the schoolgirl or the school, is found murdered. The signs are the same with both victims. Now the town around Stoke goes into terror, as they fear a serial killer is on the loose. Grace Allendale must work swiftly to find this killer. Trying to keep details from the press is proving difficult as Allendale’s lover is the crime journalist on the local paper. Personal problems now add to her already somersaulting emotions.

As facts and clues turn up, Grace realises there is a real race against time to avoid more killings. But this killer is clever and uses their knowledge to strike out at the most vulnerable, aiming and succeeding at throwing the murder team off their trail.

With a nail-biting finish, this book is unputdownable. Not every story ends happily. So, will this be any different?

Allendale is strong plotter, a good writer, and brilliant at bringing characters off the page.  Although this isn’t her first Allendale police procedural, you don’t have to read the first one to know the back story. She slips in enough history of why Allendale is back in Stoke and her family ties, and personal life as the reader needs to follow this journey.

Personally, I would recommend you read any books by Sherratt, I have, and have found them all page-turning. No doubting this author writes strong, powerful and gritty crime, and knows how to keep you on the edge of your seat as you keep turning those pages. Be prepared to stay up all night if that is the time you read.

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Reviewer: Linda Regan

www.lindareganonline.co.uk

Mel Sherratt has been a self-described "meddler of words" ever since she can remember. After winning her first writing competition at the age of 11, she has rarely been without a pen in her hand or her nose in a book. Since successfully self-publishing Taunting the Dead and seeing it soar to the rank of number one best-selling police procedural in the Amazon Kindle store in 2012, Mel has gone on to publish three more books in the critically acclaimed The Estate Series. Mel has written feature articles for The Guardian, the Writers and Artists website, and Writers Forum Magazine, to name just a few, and regularly speaks at conferences, event and talks. She lives in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, with her husband and her terrier, Dexter, and makes liberal use of her hometown as a backdrop for her writing.

https://melsherratt.co.uk/

  

Linda Regan is the author of six police procedural crime novels. She is also an actress. She holds a Masters degree in critical writing and journalism, and writes a regular column, including book reviews, for three magazines. She also presents the book-club spot on BBC Radio Kent. She is an avid reader, and welcomes the chance to read new writers. 

  To read a review of Linda's most recent book
The Terror Within
 click on the title. 
www.lindareganonline.co.uk

‘Hands Up’ by Stephen Clark

Published by WiDo Publishing: Salt Lake City, Utah,
28 September 2019.
ISBN 978-1-947966-20-8 (PB)

Hands Up is told from the viewpoints of three people, two young and one middle-aged, who all live in Philadelphia.  They find themselves caught up in the most horrendous nightmare that two families, one black and one white could ever imagine.

Our first voice is Ryan, a young, white, rookie cop. He is a straightforward, church-going lad who is engaged to be married. Unfortunately, he has just shot a black, unarmed teenager called Tyrell Wakefield. Ryan feels guilty about the shooting and wants to tell the truth about what actually happened, both to Tyrell’s family and to Detective Wiley from internal affairs who is investigating the shooting. He is hampered from doing so because his regular partner is Sergeant Greg Byrnes, a dishonest and racist cop. Byrnes can’t be relied on to give Ryan and his family good advice, but they feel loyalty to him because he was with Ryan’s father when he was shot and killed several years ago and has acted as a surrogate father to Ryan ever since.

Our second voice is Tyrell’s sister Jade. She is in her mid-twenties and has been emotionally unstable ever since her father, Kelly, abandoned her and the rest of his family when she was ten.  Jade wants two things: justice for Tyrell, and to get Kelly, whom she neither likes nor trusts, out of her life.   She will do anything to achieve her ambitions.

Kelly is our third voice. An erstwhile gangster, he returns to Philadelphia as a reformed character. Kelly wants two things: to get his wife and family back and to get justice for his son Tyrell.  To this end Kelly embarks on a mission to help rehabilitate young criminals.  This job, and Kelly’s future, are compromised when, in a desperate attempt to win Jade’s approval, Kelly asks an old mate –a criminal one – to do him a favour.

When a therapist recommends that Ryan should confront his fears by going to live in a predominately black area, Ryan and Jade meet and are attracted to each other. Detective Wiley and Jade persuade Ryan to entrap Byrnes. But Jade is also following her own agenda. It isn’t just Byrnes that Jade wants to destroy.

The shooting of unarmed black youngsters by a white policeman is a difficult and uncomfortable subject to deal with, but I thought Stephen Clark handled it confidently and even-handedly. Internal conflicts within the two families are sympathetically described as are a host of other characters; mothers, aunts, friends, lawyers, civic officials, who leap off the pages as being warm, caring, suffering, cantankerous, argumentative and manipulative as they search in their different ways, both private and public, for closure for themselves and Ryan and justice for Tyrell.   With no possibility of a happy ending, and the knowledge that those who have lost a child will never stop grieving, Hands Up manages to provide reasonable compromises on the way forwards for two of its three main characters.  It is a thought-provoking book that, notwithstanding our close involvement with its tragic content, makes a very satisfying and enjoyable read.

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Reviewer Angela Crowther

Stephen Clark is a former award-winning journalist who served as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and as a politics editor for the Washington, D.C. bureau of FoxNews.com. As a reporter for the Utica Observer-Dispatch, he won a New York Newspaper Publishers Association Award of Distinguished Community Service for his investigation into the financial struggles of nonprofit services.  He also won a Society of Professional Journalists Award for Investigative Reporting at the Stamford Advocate for his series exposing an elderly grifter’s charity organization. Stephen grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and now lives in North Jersey with his wife and son. He has a bachelor’s degree in communications from Arcadia University and a master’s degree in journalism from Syracuse University.

https://www.stephenclarkbooks.com

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.