Series: Collins and Griffiths #3
Published by Corvus on February 7 2019
Pages: 359
Amazon UK
Goodreads
Please don't let me die. Please don't. The final words of teenager Spencer Cardoso as he bleeds out on a London street, his life cut short in a single moment of rage.
Detective Inspector Kieran Shaw's not interested in the infantry. Shaw likes the proper criminals, the ones who can plan things.
For two years he's been painstakingly building evidence against an organized network, the Eardsley Bluds. Operation Perseus is about to make its arrests.
So when a low-level Bluds member is stabbed to death on Gallowstree Lane, Shaw's priority is to protect his operation. An investigation into one of London's tit for tat killings can't be allowed to derail Perseus and let the master criminals go free.
But there's a witness to the murder, fifteen-year-old Ryan Kennedy. Already caught up in Perseus and with the Bluds, Ryan's got his own demons and his own ideas about what's important.
As loyalties collide and priorities clash, a chain of events is triggered that draws in Shaw's old adversary DI Sarah Collins and threatens everyone with a connection to Gallowstree Lane...
"Kate London, the new rising star of crime fiction, is the real thing. Read everything she writes." --Tony Parsons
So welcome! I have the pleasure in closing this awesome tour today and I get to share with you an excerpt from the book! Very excited about this!
Before I do share this with you, I want to share with you some of the fab reviews that have been written this week!
Steph’s book blog says
I liked following the two police investigations. Both of them wanting the same results for different reasons. And both struggling to accept that one may be more important than the other. This part of the novel was more detailed than many others I have read. It was easy to follow, and I found it interesting and informative without being overpowering.
This is police procedural fiction at it’s finest and I was gripped the whole way through. Yet again it made me feel great respect towards those that choose to go into policing and all they give up to do the career that sometimes can be a thankless job. I hope to read more from this author in the future.
The Literary Shed says
From the start, London’s writing draws the reader in. We care about her cast of excellently honed characters. We believe in the world she creates – the events depicted sadly too familiar, the staging of Spencer’s death bringing to mind the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence.
An outstanding piece of crime fiction.
Live and Deadly says
London’s writing is tight and her plotting exemplary. She creates just the right mix of character driven personalities and plot driven action to give the reader a strong sense of what it means to belong both to the wider police family and the opposing gang family. Loyalty is the recurring theme here and it is a compelling one.
My Bookish Blogspot says
Imagine a spider spinning its web, the strands are numerous, until finally they all fit neatly together, ready to catch its prey. This is exactly how I viewed Kate London’s Gallowstree Lane. It didn’t matter that it happened to be book three of a series, as it stood up so well as a standalone, even if there were a few bits that I perhaps, needed to catch up on.
It’s worth mentioning that although this is the third in the Collins & Griffiths series and that some plot elements lead on from previous books, this can absolutely be read as a standalone novel. It’s a dynamic police procedural with a character-driven plot.
Rachel Read It says
‘Gallowstree Lane’ is a police procedural which tackles a very real and prevalent issue without undermining it, and using it as a platform.It is saying that gangland violence is real, it happens and there is no honour in dying for a cause like Spencer did. It happens way too often, is morally unacceptable and these children are being preyed upon and used until they ultimately it is too late. The investigation into Spencer’s death and it’s ensuing effects are played out across a timeframe for what you imagine is real life police work amidst interdepartmental wrangling-it then races towards a climatic showdown between those responsible and those searching to bring justice in death to a boy who was so ill served any in his short life.
Varietat says
This had been a race against the clock, in the beginning the story is paused, but then the clock starts ticking and all the action evolves so quick that the ending is not disappointing at all, but bittersweet.
Sandie’s Bookshelves says
I found it interesting to read the conflicting viewpoints of the police officers involved, as to whose investigation would take priority once the two cases overlapped. The author clearly has a lot of knowledge on how evidence can be shared (or not) between teams and this knowledge comes across strongly throughout to make for a very credible tale. The events in the police officers’ private lives clearly had some influence on how they interacted with one another and I would recommend reading the previous books in the series if you want more detail about this side of the story – I wasn’t aware at first that this was not a standalone novel, and while I didn’t have the background history it did not spoil the book overall.
✮ Excerpt ✮
Detective Inspector Sarah Collins had set off before dawn, whipping round London’s arterial roads, thundering along the motorway and then winding down country lanes to the Saxon church that lay, through a gate and along a path, on the brow of a small hill. The hedgerows and trees were flaming with late colour.
More than thirty minutes remained before the funeral. She slid the car seat back and drank her flask of tea. Caroline had offered to come with her, but it felt wrong to be so intimately together so soon after they had separated. She sighed and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. The only sound now was birdsong.
When she was only sixteen, Sarah’s sister had died. Susie’s boyfriend, Patrick, had been driving too fast and lost control on a sharp bend. It was no more than a moment’s misjudgement, a youthful thrill at the power of the car he had borrowed for the day, but in an
Sarah sighed again. It was tiresome to think of this so many years later and at such a very different funeral. But you can’t control what comes into your mind. Perhaps it was Susie’s youth when she died, or perhaps it was the vast sadness that Sarah felt now, expanding inside her like air.
The body is not a fairy tale. Sometimes it does not survive an impact or a stab wound or the bullet from a gun.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and tidied her flask away. Into her mind had stepped the children who would follow the hearse today. There was no remedy for the loss of a parent: that was the thing she could not handle. When she was at work, Sarah could do her best to deliver justice, but today what could she contribute? She would sit alone at the back of the church.
Pay her respects. Bother no one.
Other cars had started to arrive. They bounced up the bank and parked and spilled their occupants onto the verges. The funeral today was for a police officer, and so many of the mourners were also police. They were easy to recognize from their best-behaviour attitude and their smart clothes and the assessing way they met your eye.
There were children too, populating the graveyard as they spread out on their way to the church. Sarah smiled as she watched them. A chubby boy of about four in matching blazer and trousers. A slightly older girl in an apricot taffeta dress and dark cardigan – dressed more for a wedding than a funeral. Teenage girls in tight dresses and spike heels that sank into the path or wobbled beneath them. And teenage boys with gelled hair and outsized Adam’s apples, squeezed into horrible suits in tribute to the baffling adult world that couldn’t today be gainsaid.
Sarah’s heart went out to them in their poorly concealed vulnerability, their sensitivity to any slight, their hastily made mistakes and their painful, long-drawn-out regrets. As she watched the adults gathering in their offspring with varying degrees of patience, she knew that for all the push and pull of parenthood, these children were the lucky ones. Mum and Dad cajoling them towards their emergence from this desperate and grandiose and ridiculous time when even a haircut felt like a life-or-death event.
Until next time xxx
Thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for the tour invite and the Publisher and the author for an excerpt from the book.
annecater says
Thanks so much for supporting the Blog Tour Zoe xx
Zoe says
You are very welcome, thank you for having me x
Jenchaos says
Wow. This looks cool.