Crucified

Lynda La Plante

STILL haunted by a harrowing case involving a sadistic serial killer who butchered and decapitated young girls, London Met Detective Sergeant Jack Warr is fast reaching breaking point.

With his home life at high pressure point after the birth of a new baby, his doctor wife Maggie on maternity leave, and the family finances struggling to cope with house renovations, the last thing Jack needs is another grisly murder.

Liverpool-born screenwriter and author Lynda La Plante (pictured below), one of the nation’s favourite police procedural writers, is back to dazzle and delight readers with the fifth book in her latest coruscating crime-cracking series which has its seeds planted in Widows, the runaway hit story starring a group of robbers’ widows who attempt a daring heist after the demise of their crooked husbands.

Harnessing the same gripping cocktail of crooks, cops and cunning plot twists, the DS Jack Warr novels have fast forwarded over 25 years to discover not just what happened to those nefarious gangsters’ molls but to meet intriguing new star Jack, a thirty-something detective finding his feet in the Met after a move from rural Devon, and discovering links to the past that, even in his wildest dreams, he could never have imagined. In Crucified, we find Jack struggling to cope with life at a time when he should be resting on his laurels. He’s just put brutal, unrepentant murderer Rodney Middleton behind bars and he’s ready to enjoy some time at home with his GP wife Maggie, young daughter Hannah, their new (as yet unnamed) baby boy and Jack’s adoptive mum Penny who lives with them.

Instead, Middleton’s gruesome legacy has left Jack with violent nightmares in which he punches, shouts and kicks out, terrifying Maggie. The torment he feels over the killer’s refusal to reveal the whereabouts of his other victims, plus a series of other events and dark secrets, make him feel like there is ‘a hurricane raging inside his head.’

Refusing the Met-offered counselling service, Jack instead finds solace in renewing a dangerous friendship with charismatic art forger Adam Border. But when a man is found horrifically murdered and nailed to a giant cross in a framer’s shop, Jack cannot help becoming fascinated by the elaborately staged killing and senses a connection to the case even though it is not in his jurisdiction.

Could Adam be the victim, or even the murderer, and is Jack’s involvement that of a detective or witness? Finding the truth will unveil a shocking portrait of a corrupt art world... but it could also expose the secrets Jack is so desperately trying to keep hidden.

Jack, who still struggles to walk a straight line between the right and wrong sides of the law, has now firmly embedded himself in readers’ hearts. With a new baby in the house, and domestic duties competing with hidden allegiances, our maverick detective is increasingly being forced to re-evaluate just where his priorities lie. Still emotionally drained from his dealings with the sadistic Middleton, and the resultant night terrors, Jack seems to have problems and secrets in all corners of his life... not least the crisis in their finances which he has so far refused to reveal to his wife and his long-suffering mother.

Packed with suspense, authentic police and forensic detail, La Plante’s dark, satirical humour and a brilliantly imagined cast of characters, including the restless, unpredictable Jack Warr, Crucified is another masterclass in crime writing.
(Zaffre, hardback, £22)