Description

The Batterton Police series follows the Major Crime Investigation Team in Batterton, a sizeable town somewhere in England. These are police procedurals that won’t have detectives saying, ‘That’s not how we do things.’ Overworked and often misled, the Batterton police are as humanly fallible as me and you – but like the Mounties they never give up till they get their man (or woman). They work as a team; you won’t find any detectives here who drink too much, go out on investigations of their own without telling anyone what they are up to, or find themselves in conflict with senior officers more interested in fame and position than catching criminals. There are no interview rooms with a one-way mirror as one of the walls because, popular as they are on TV, almost none of England’s police stations has such a thing. Instead, other officers watch what is happening on monitors and listen through loudspeakers. No interview is ever interrupted by someone knocking at the door and saying, “Boss, you need to hear this.” That’s for two reasons: the first is that the only time an interview in an English police station will be interrupted by a knock on the door is if the station is on fire. If someone wants to get a message to one of the interviewers, they text the interviewer’s phone. And the second is that “the boss” will not be in there: interviews under caution are conducted only by specially trained officers who will usually be detective constables but occasionally detective sergeants. Having a detective chief inspector walk into an interview room, slap down a file and say, “Okay, sonny, it’s time you told us the truth” may make great television but it doesn’t happen in practice. And, finally, policeman’s lives continue when they are off duty and this series follows their lives as they develop, book by book.

In this Book 2, Jensen Bartholomew is Zooming with his brother, Cedric, when the door behind Cedric opens and a figure enters covered head to foot in a black gown and wearing a Guy Fawkes mask. As Jensen watches, the figure wraps something around Cedric’s neck and pulls it tight. Cedric struggles to free himself and his feet stamp a furious tattoo on the worn lino beneath them, but the figure does not relent. Cedric sinks out of sight. The figure leans in close to the screen and points through it at Jensen. In a deep and gravelly voice, it says, ‘You’re next.’ Then the screen goes as dead as Cedric. Before Detective Inspector Susanna David and her team have unraveled this first murder, others die – and Susanna uncovers a web that entangles not only their local MP but a much wider conspiracy.