The Metropolitan Police have smashed a major counterfeiting gang - but the ringleaders have escaped. Also Ron Walker has a problem: How do you protect your family when they are being threatened by a cold, soulless killer? When the forgers target Grancester, trying desperately to re-establish themselves in the provinces, David Russell's investigation becomes a race against time, both to convict the men and to save Walker's grandson from the fate which is stalking him on the idyllic highway of the Grand Union Canal.

Like its predecessor, 'Strangers' is a crime story of around 82,000 words, using the same major location in the fictional Northamptonshire town and the same central cast of characters. Also like 'Flashback' this is no classic "who-dun-it". The identity of the villains is apparent from the outset - what becomes clear as the story progresses is the lengths to which they will go to reinvent their criminal business and the psychotic mentality of the gang's 'enforcer', a bull-necked Sicilian who enjoys killing - especially killing children.

A lack of evidence has kept the Metropolitan Police from arresting the ringleaders and now the same difficulty prevents Russell from taking effective measures against them, even after the first brutal murder. But the two men are beginning to make mistakes, in their desperation - tiny clues begin to add up, a case slowly taking shape until there is a second killing. With the race well and truly joined, dramatic events disturb the peace and tranquility of the canal...

Some of the scenes in 'Strangers' are as powerfully, painfully, emotive as those in 'Flashback', as two children become the innocent pawns of the criminals. But once again, the final, startling, revelation leads to a remarkably positive conclusion, giving once more Geoffrey Lewis's trademark up-beat ending to his story.

As with 'Flashback', David Russell's family appear throughout the tale; indeed the opening chapter takes place in the family's cottage home. In this case his son, Daniel, takes a slightly more important part in the story, notably in a scene set in the boy's school. Once again, Russell's own easy rapport with children is apparent, helping him both to ease their suffering and amass the evidence he needs.


STRANGERS sample chapter:

"Early Summer. The frenetic, multicoloured blossoming of Spring, all petals and dewdrops, was done; Nature had settled into that quiet period of steady growth which would end in the fullness of time with the bounty of harvest and the plump ripeness of Autumn.

David Russell slipped his tie over his head and turned to the bedroom window. Gazing out across the garden to the open fields beyond, his eyes were greeted by a symphony in shades of green - the patchwork of fields, each crop a subtly different tone, the dark lines of the hedges, the shaded darkness of the occassional copse and the tracts of what had been in antiquity the Great Thorn Wood. The brightness of the morning faded gradually into a bluish haze as he raised his eyes to the horizon - wasn't life wonderful! He knotted the tie, a contented smile on his face.

Even the criminal fraternity seemed to be taking life relatively easy just at the moment. A Detective-Inspector in the Northamptonshire Constabulary, their assorted, nefarious activities were Russell's chief preoccupation - a period of calm in their clandestine endeavours gave him and his colleagues time to catch up with their workload, to take stock of the situation, to prepare for the next, inevitable, onslaught. Not that all was sweetness and light, of course: Grancester, where Russell was based in the new divisional station alongside the town's Southern relief road, had been taking its turn in suffering the depredations of a Northampton-based pair whose practised technique involved quietly watching a wealthy neighbourhood for some weeks before executing a series of burglaries, under the cover of darkness, at homes they knew to be unoccupied."

Availability:

‘Strangers’ was published in April 2004.  Copies can be ordered through any good bookshop by quoting the title and author or ISBN 978-0-9545624-1-0, or direct from this website.  The cover price is £7.99.

Trade orders may be placed through any wholesaler via Bookdata, or contact the publishers at sales@sgmpublishing.co.uk

From reviews of the previous David Russell books:

‘Northamptonshire’s own answer to Inspector Morse’

          Image Magazine

‘Impossible to put down’

     Graham Sherwood, Choice Magazine

‘Plots brimming with unexpected twists’

         What’s On Magazine

STRANGERS by Geoffrey Lewis

STRANGERS

by Geoffrey Lewis

paperback

£7.99

ISBN 978-0-9545624-1-0

published by
SGM Publishing