Forgotten Lives by Ray Britain
3.5 stars
Forgotten Lives is a crime fiction drama set in the UK. It opens with the stabbing of a known criminal on the doorstep of his home. This is just the first body in this latest case for DCI Doug Stirling and his team. Several more murders occur, including the suspected murder of a fellow police officer.
Ray Britain uses his own experiences as a Senior Investigating Officer to add accuracy to the investigation methods in this story, and I can see this appealing to other members of the police force who will recognise the restraints and pressure which the UK police are under on a daily basis.
However, this story also needs to appeal to readers of crime fiction and for this book to be able to successfully compete in this fiction genre, it would need more editing, especially to cut down some of the minutiae of the investigation. I know that Britain is keen to show the real aspects of police work, but the average reader’s interest in such detail might be limited.
Overall, a good crime plot with plenty of gruesome details, but the gritty tension of the situation which makes this genre popular got lost in the real-crime style of the detective work.
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A man is murdered with quiet efficiency on his doorstep. A strange emblem left behind suggests a gang killing but when more bodies are found with the same emblem, and one of them a cop, DCI Doug Stirling’s investigation takes a sinister turn. But what linked the victims in life, and now in death?
When more deaths are uncovered, miles away and years ago, all with the same emblem left behind, pressure mounts on Stirling. Is it the work of the same person? If so, why are they killing again, and why here? One thing is clear, the killer is highly skilled, ruthless, and always one step ahead of the investigation. Is someone feeding information to them?
Working in a crippling heatwave with too few investigators, too many questions and not enough answers, when wild media speculation of a vigilante at work sparks copycat attacks, demonstrations for justice and with politicians fearing riots, Stirling needs a result – fast!
Meanwhile, Stirling’s private life is falling apart, not helped when Lena Novak of the National Crime Agency is assigned to his team. But is she all that she seems?
Things could not get worse. Stirling takes a call from a retired cop. Things just got worse!
When Stirling closes in on the killer he finds the killer’s trademark inside his home. – he is being targeted.
Rosie Amber 