Why a booktrail?
DS Allie Shenton is back and this time a local nightclub owner has been murdered.As she investigates, there is someone watching her…
Set over a 48 hour period which ratchets up the tension.
Story in a nutshell
One of the notorious Johnson brothers is found murdered and a bag of money has gone missing, resulting in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
DS Allie Shenton and her team are tasked with catching the killer but their first problems arise when they notice that the suspects themselves are double-crossing each other and the web of deception around the whole case is starting to get tighter and tighter….
At the same time, Allie feels very uncomfortable as she has the feeling that someone is watching her. The man who attacked her sister all those years ago seems to be back…but why?
Place and setting
King street
where the traffic is busy
Regina street
central to the investigation
Ford Green Road and Sparrow Street
Where the police look more closely at the residents. Harrison House is located nr Ford Green Road
48 hours in Stoke on Trent. Now this is not the kind of agenda you’d want to follow in real life but in a fictional setting, it’s more than an adventure weekend!
With the case of double dealing growing by the day, Allie Shenton is back but at her most vulnerable, not surprising as she is being stalked. As she continues to investigate the murder of Jordan Johnson, she gets further and further embroiled in the web of deceit that seems to cover much of the city of Stoke. One character is described thus –
Growing up with two older brothers on one of the meanest streets in Stoke on Trent….
The community in and around the flats where the body is found is a cold, dubious and insular place to be. Most have alibis of where they were on the night it happened but the threads of truth seemed to be frayed and barely holding the various stories together.
Enter Allie Shenton trying to pick her way through this jungle of lies and it’s a hard, gritty path she treads. Smell the fear and the anticipation as one thing leads to another, the tension of the stalker emphasising one woman’s fight to carry on regardless. Police work is a series of tough calls, with the team sacrificing everything apart from the next potential lead.
He parked on Ford Green Road noticing a few more neighbours’ cars nearby…
The 48 Hours in Stoke is a gritty and very realistic ride. The sense of a closed and insular community reveals a disparate bunch of people, each with their own set of values, reasons for telling the story they tell, and the overall effect on this crime in the wider community.
Over a small amount of time, a puzzle is set and the clock is set ticking. Whether the pieces will be blown to smithereens before the time runs out is the exhilarating journey Mel Sherratt takes you on..
The book trail 