WHEN ex-cop Tom Killgannon goes undercover at a bleak
moorland prison, the last man he wants to meet is the ruthless gangster he
helped to put behind bars. Unprotected and operating alone, Tom must fight to stay
alive in a deadly cat-and-mouse game at one of the most isolated and lawless jails
in the country.
Welcome back to the dark and menacing world of Tom Kilgannon, the likeable but dysfunctional hero created by bestselling author Martyn Waites, whose mastery of plotting, atmosphere and characterisation have made him the crime king of chills and thrills.
Born and raised in Newcastle, Waites has been nominated for every major British crime fiction award, has won the Grand Prix du Roman Noir, and is now on the second book of his Tom Killgannon series which opened last year with The Old Religion and garnered much critical acclaim.
Tom’s perilous new mission is set against an unflinching, eye-opening portrayal of life ‘inside,’ a grim place that Waites knows only too
well after working as a Writer-in-Residence at two prisons, including a young
offenders’ institution. The result is a story full of mystery, danger and nail-biting,
claustrophobic tension, and peopled by a cast of perfectly imagined, flawed
characters, some haunted by memories and some guilty of sins in the past.
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| COMPELLING SERIES: Martyn Waites |
After sinister events in the neighbourhood, he has become a
surrogate father to Lila, a seventeen-year-old girl on the run from an abusive
family and boyfriend, and his life has settled into an uneasy calm.
But, once a staunch rationalist, Tom has found that a
superstitious side of him has been awakened by the ‘untamed’ wilds of Cornwall
and when he is unexpectedly recalled to active service by his handler, DS
Sheridan, he senses something dark and foreboding is ‘gathering like storm
clouds.’ Tom’s mission is to befriend notorious child killer Noel
Cunningham, known as the Choirmaster, and find out where he buried the bodies
two of his young victims who have never been found. The only problem is that Tom, who has suffered from claustrophobia
since childhood, has to obtain the information from inside Blackmoor prison, a
forbidding jail on an isolated stretch of moorland. Only DS Sheridan knows that
Tom is there and who he really is, leaving the undercover policeman isolated
and vulnerable.
But what Tom hadn’t reckoned on was coming face to face with
Dean Foley, the vicious gang leader he arrested in Stretford four years ago and
whose smile could turn on a breath from ‘a charismatic salesman’s’ to ‘fierce
and snarling.’ Put away for life by Tom’s testimony, Foley is now ruling
the roost in jail, ‘screws paid off, no one could get to him,’ and he recognises
Tom. It sets in motion a deadly game with Foley determined to get his revenge.
Click HERE for Lancashire Post review
Click HERE for Lancashire Post review
Tom desperately tries to get in touch with his one contact, DS
Sheridan, but he unaccountably cannot be reached and soon Tom is questioning
the real reason he has been sent to Blackmoor prison… Using his knowledge and his empathy for those whose lives he
helped to turn around whilst working in prisons, Waites employs the motif of a
haunted house and a hint of supernatural as Tom Killgannon fights his own fear
of cramped spaces whilst struggling to outwit a child killer, and survive the
machinations of the brutal Dean Foley.
As the story moves between Tom’s nightmare in Blackmoor
Prison and the lives of those he cares for back home in St Petroc, the suspense
mounts, and the mystery of Sheridan’s mysterious silence and the truth behind
Tom’s mission are slowly and chillingly revealed.
The tragedy of broken, blighted – and sometimes bigoted –
lives lies at the heart of this compelling series and Waites, with his finely
tuned social conscience, always writes with compassion and understanding whilst
delivering hard-hitting, edge-of the-seat thrillers.
Gripping, gritty and addictive…
(Zaffre, paperback, £8.99)
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