A Song from Dead Lips

By: William Shaw

Narrated by: Cameron Stewart

London, October 1968. As Beatles fans encamp outside Abbey Road Studios up the road, the Marylebone CID is as much an old boys' club as it ever was: comfortably sexist, racially prejudiced and crawling with corruption.

Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen is the pariah of the office, having just run out on a fellow officer held at knifepoint, when it's shaken up by the arrival of WPC Helen Tozer: awkward chatterbox, farmgirl, and the first woman to enter the murder unit - apart from the secretary.

When a young woman is found naked and strangled in well-to-do St John's Wood, her identity is a mystery. The neighbours offer nothing but xenophobic suspicions, witnesses are staying silent; only Tozer's savvy gives Breen a lead.

Following it, resourceless, deep into the rural backwaters, Breen sees one dead body lead to another - a trail of bloodshed taking them dangerously close to a killer with everything to lose...

©2013 William Shaw (P)2013 AudioGo Ltd

I was pleasantly surprised with this one

Another police procedural but I was pleasantly surprised with this one. I think I decided to try it because it was set in the late sixties and ended up enjoying it. The plot and character development were realistic and interesting. The main character has been maligned by a corrupt colleague, a bubbly country girl provides a breath of fresh air in the late sixties chauvenistic atmosphere and after some unpredictable twists and turns the complete picture emerges and the crimes are solved. I have added the next in the series to my wish list and placed this one in the top tier of my library.