The Long Close Call Book

J Wallis Martin's first two books singled her out as a new mistress of the psychological thriller, and The Long Close Callis a worthy successor, with its tale of a man pushed to the edge by new stress and old demons. McLaughlan was not always the high-flier of London's Flying Squad; once he was a disturbed small boy whose brother had mysteriously disappeared and whose father was one of the most notorious armed robbers of the sixties. When he kills the son of one of today's brutal criminal dynasties, his life is on the line--his son is abducted and he knows that to give himself up will mean slow torture rather than mere death. It is time to appeal to both his fathers--the ageing cop who befriended the family and the violent old man who deserted them; but both old men have questions of their own to ask... Tricksy in its flashes back and forward, spectacular in its understanding of stress and what it does to people, this is a powerful thriller with a nasty sense of irony and a bitter command of internal police politics and paranoia. --Roz KaveneyRead More