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Border City Blues #1
Call & Response
The first in Cumbrian crime best-seller J J Salkeld's new series of humorous and gritty Kindle-friendly novellas. Set in Carlisle - on the border between England and Scotland and much else besides - Call & Response introduces DS Samantha 'Pepper' Wilson and her North Division CID team.
In this first episode Pepper struggles to cope with the madness and sadness of everyday policing, whist covering for an absent boss and adapting to a new Superintendent who's come straight from a supermarket's supply chain to British policing's chain of command.
And matters take a serious turn when a case of 'revenge porn' is reported, involving members of a minority ethnic group, and one of Pepper's young DCs is assaulted, within spitting distance of Carlisle's shiny new Police HQ. Both cases are delicate and potentially inflammatory, and Pepper's short fuse is trimmed still more by the return to Carlisle of a dangerous career criminal with whom Pepper grew up, and whose reappearance could have dangerous implications for her, the city, and its now almost vanishingly 'thin blue line'.
In this first episode Pepper struggles to cope with the madness and sadness of everyday policing, whist covering for an absent boss and adapting to a new Superintendent who's come straight from a supermarket's supply chain to British policing's chain of command.
And matters take a serious turn when a case of 'revenge porn' is reported, involving members of a minority ethnic group, and one of Pepper's young DCs is assaulted, within spitting distance of Carlisle's shiny new Police HQ. Both cases are delicate and potentially inflammatory, and Pepper's short fuse is trimmed still more by the return to Carlisle of a dangerous career criminal with whom Pepper grew up, and whose reappearance could have dangerous implications for her, the city, and its now almost vanishingly 'thin blue line'.
141 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 22, 2014
16 people are currently reading
19 people want to read
About the author
J.J. Salkeld
35 books22 followersJ.J. Salkeld (Richard Simpson's pen-name) worked as a journalist and documentary photographer, based in Cumbria, before beginning the Lakeland Murders series of detective novels.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 18, 2019
Sergeant Pepper Leads the Way
This is a quick afternoon read of DS Pepper and various police staff and riff raff in this community. She is a tough no nonsense woman who likes to hand out a punch or two. Her boss seems outstanding and supportive, a experienced DC that has just been assigned to her and a young DC that is hardly wet behind the ears and eager to do his best but we will see as characters develop over the next couple of books. I would like to see longer books from this author as his writing is easy to read. Enjoyed the new characters and book.
This is a quick afternoon read of DS Pepper and various police staff and riff raff in this community. She is a tough no nonsense woman who likes to hand out a punch or two. Her boss seems outstanding and supportive, a experienced DC that has just been assigned to her and a young DC that is hardly wet behind the ears and eager to do his best but we will see as characters develop over the next couple of books. I would like to see longer books from this author as his writing is easy to read. Enjoyed the new characters and book.
August 20, 2018
I like J. J. Salkeld's characters and writing style. People from other series he has written pop up now and again like old friends.
At least once in every novel he refers to one of the characters by the wrong name. I always thought this was a proofreading error, but now I am wondering. Is this some private joke he has going to see if someone in his life is actually reading his book?
At least once in every novel he refers to one of the characters by the wrong name. I always thought this was a proofreading error, but now I am wondering. Is this some private joke he has going to see if someone in his life is actually reading his book?
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews