Dead Line

by P.J. Skinner

Detective Inspector Bill Grant is having a bad day, and it's about to get worse.When Bill comes home to find his wife has left him, his whole life goes up in smoke. His teenage daughters will be home in hours, expecting answers he doesn't have and a meal he can’t cook.
But there's no time to fall apart. Two detectives are down with flu, and Bill is thrust into active duty on a case nobody wants - a missing teenager, a councillor's son, and all the political pressure that comes with it.
As Bill searches for the boy, he's forced to confront an uncomfortable he doesn't know his own daughters any better than he understands this case. He's been coasting for years, happy with mediocrity as a detective and as a father.
Then the investigation takes a dark turn into Portsmouth's county lines network when Bill realises that the murdered boy and his daughters have more in common than he imagined. In a city where everyone's connected, some secrets refuse to stay buried. And some fathers get a second chance—if they're brave enough to take it.

Recommended for readers of intelligent British crime fiction in the tradition of Ann Cleeves and Peter Robinson.

Kindle Edition

Expected publication June 30, 2026

About the author

PJ Skinner was born in Guildford, one of seven siblings. When she was six, the family moved to Ireland where she attended school. She went to Trinity College, Dublin University, graduating as a geologist. After graduation, PJ spent 35 years working in over thirty countries as an exploration geologist. PJ worked in many remote, strange, and often dangerous places, and loved every minute, despite encountering her fair share of misogyny and other perils. During this time, she collected the tall tales and real-life experiences which inspired her to write the Sam Harris Adventure Series. The series chronicles the adventures of a pioneering female geologist in an almost exclusively male world.
After finishing the Sam Harris Adventure series, PJ's childhood in Ireland inspired her to write the Green Family Saga, which follows the fortunes of an English family who move to Ireland just before the start of the Troubles, under the name of Kate Foley.
PJ moved to the south coast of England just before the Covid pandemic. There she wrote Mortal Mission, a sci-fi mystery set on Mars, inspired by her fascination with all things celestial. It is a science-based murder mystery; think The Martian with fewer potatoes and more bodies.
The enjoyment of writing Mortal Mission encouraged her to try writing a mystery series. She has always been a massive fan of crime and mystery, so it was inevitable she would turn her hand to it eventually. She published Deadly Return, the first book in the Seacastle Mysteries in July 2023 to great success. The Seacastle Mystery Series is a contemporary cosy mystery series with an amateur female sleuth, her grumpy ex-husband, hacker stepson and ungrateful rescue cat. The ensemble cast adds banter and humour as the series follows their stories between the murder mysteries. Poison Politics, book 10, will be released on the 31st of December 2025.