Sudden Death

Point Crime: The Beat #7

by David Belbin

When Dean gets picked to play for Nottingham Forest it means a new start for him. Of course, he's always been into team games, just not legitimate ones. As the motorway team move in for a big-time burglary Dean has to decide which side he's on. Whichever he chooses, there'll be a penalty to pay.

Genres: Young Adult, Crime

224 pages, Paperback

First published November 14, 1997

About the author

Belbin's work is known for breaking boundaries and dealing responsibly with difficult social issues that affect teenagers. He first attained success with a number of books for Scholastic's Point Crime series.

Reviews

[Sarah Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a real page turner, and bugger... I knew something bad was coming 🤦

* Ben dumps Ruth and leaves her heartbroken. He then tries to get it on with Julie.
* Paul asks Claire to marry him, but she says she's not sure because her parents just split up. At the end of the book after speaking to her father she decides to tell Paul yes.
* Paul continues working on the Motorway Team case, and after accidentally seeing Eddie, decides to follow him.
* A football player (Dean) has someone break into his home, and his landlady ends up dead.
* Dean is blackmailed into helping an old friend (Joe) break into one of his football player colleagues house, but it doesn't really work out.
* Anyway, Paul ends up catching 3 of the motorway gang, and working out and arresting who killed Dean's landlady.
* Paul is heading home when a dark van pulls up behind him. Men open the van doors, and one of them shoots Paul and kills him 🙈 Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

[Noa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Most of the book is incredibly boring dialogue, with a thousand characters introduced one after the other but very few of them having any depth or merit at all. The ending seems like it's meant to piss the reader off. 214 pages in my version of the book, and I read it from start to finish in about 2 hours - not worth the read at all.