Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
The trail leads to a gang leader who is the subject of a major organized crime investigation led by Detective Inspector Kieran Shaw. It is told from four points of view, Sarah, Lizzie, Kieran and Ryan and far from being distracting it is absorbing, giving the reader different takes on the same incident and a comprehensive overview. Behind the headlines of gan The death of Spencer, in the arms of an offduty paramedic, in the Gallowstree Lane area of London, is as unflinching and hard hitting as you’d expect it to be-the violence and unecessary nature of this boy’s death spills from the page as does the blood from his femoral artery.
As loyalties collide and priorities clash, a chain of events is triggered that draws in Shaw's old adversary DI Sarah Collins and threatens everyone with a connection to Gallowstree Lane.The author was clearly using her experience as a police officer to inform her creation of these characters. Given the series title, I assumed (Sarah) Collins and (Lizzie) Griffiths were a team but in fact it turns out their paths have crossed only briefly in the course of previous cases. It revolves around gangs, drugs, prostitutes, petty criminals and more with knife fights being the weapon of choice in most instances. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.
I have not read the other books in the series (there are two I believe), so the characters were new to me.The stabbing death of 15 year old Spencer Cardoso causes ripples far beyond the norm for the death of a low level drug dealer, much of it centred around Ryan Harris, his friend and witness to the killing. At somewhere, about sixty per cent in all the disparate strands began to come together and I found I just had to keep reading. Gallowstree Lane’ is a police procedural which tackles a very real and prevalent issue without undermining it, and using it as a platform.
It is clear from our first introduction to Sarah Collins that we are already supposed to know these members of the Police Force. The narrative hones in on the reverberations and consequences of this murder, conveyed from the perspective of Ryan, the committed DI Sarah Collins determined to find the murderer who sees Ryan as a witness, single mother DC Lizzie Griffiths determined to prove herself who focuses on Ryan and a past assault, and the hard bitten, implacable DI Kieran Shaw, hellbent on protecting a two year undercover operation, Perseus, aimed at cutting down on the huge influx of guns and gun crime in the area. For a while I dithered between four and five stars, but there is so much good stuff here and it became so good in the second half that it’s still a five star book for me. Recent divorcee, Karen Daily and her two kids have for the first time in years found joy as they settle into the close-knit community of Savage Lane. I thoroughly enjoyed Gallowstree Lane which examines the aftermath and ramifications of a straightforward crime, if murder can be regarded as straightforward.DI Sarah Collins is interested in Ryan as a witness to her murder investigation, DC Lizzie Griffiths is interested him for a previous assault case she is investigating and DI Kieran Shaw isn’t sure what his interest is but he has one in case the situation messes up Operation Perseus, his two year old investigation into gun running in the borough.
Regrettably, this means that there are long periods of sitting around doing little with sudden bursts of activity. It is a Sarah Collins and Lizzie Griffiths detective novel, both of them are very strong female detectives, but they don’t have much communication between each other throughout the book, so I don’t really see them as a duo. I just want to give a shout-out to Elaine who was a great character, and Sarah who in my opinion was the only character there with an actual moral code. I found the characters more realistic and the petty squabbling between the various Police departments only too believable. The murder threatens to derail Operation Perseus, a cover police investigation into the Eardsley Bluds, an organised criminal network.
I haven’t read either of the previous two books in the series – Post Mortem and Death Message – but Gallowstree Lane worked perfectly well as a standalone, although when I get the chance I’d like to go back and read the first two. A game of cat and mouse with only one conclusion, someone's going to die, and someone's going to have to pay. There is some attempt at the psychology of crime in the character of Ryan, maybe even some hints of how radicalisation can occur in the vulnerable. Who knew that the success of one operation could inadvertently lead to the falling apart of everything else?
Great Deal 
New Comment