One Oblique One
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It is the summer of 1987.
It is three years away from the world-wide web being inaugurated. It is ten years before the first accessible mobile phone, and a whole twenty-one years before the first iPhone is launched. ‘It’s A Sin’ by the Pet Shop Boys is number one in the charts, available on cassette and vinyl. The sun is rising on political correctness yet news of this has yet to reach Nottingham CID. Racist words are still used without challenge. AIDs is rife. Hugging is for hippies and the author of this book has recently been appointed a Detective in the CID. Of course, some things are the same as today; people still get bludgeoned to death in their own homes. Same as it ever was. You just can’t tweet about it yet.
Detective Inspector Stark and his team of detectives investigate the brutal murder of the Marriott family discovered in their own homes. The murderer? It could be Charles Lyon, wealthy, but pathetic sugar daddy, or Winston Kelly, notorious Rastafarian drug-dealer with psychotic tendencies, or Stan Tindle, the burglar who is seen in the location at the time of the offence, or. . .? Stark, struggling to keep a lid on his secret anxiety, and his team strive to get to the truth, which remains just outside of their grasp, until they obtain a clue from an unlikely source, but by then it is too late. . .
The author, a former real-life Detective re-visits his critically acclaimed, gritty debut, with new scenes and new characters which is a real ‘page- turner’ for fans of crime novels and thrillers or those merely intrigued enough to explore the depths to which humanity can sink.
‘A most promising debut.’ Marcel Berlins, The Times
‘It’s a good yarn with a very well-crafted plot.’ Jay Iliff, Sunday Express.
‘An interesting cast of well-observed characters, many of them pleasingly quirky, and depicts them with unsentimental compassion. I look forward to reading his next book.’ James Melville, Hampstead and Highgate Express.
One Oblique One - Shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association 1991 John Creasey Award
Best debut crime novel – globally.
