Please join me in welcoming Kerry Wilkinson to Always With a Book. The latest book in Kerry‘s Detective Jessica Daniel’s series, The Woman in Black, is being published today in the US – it has already been published in the UK. This is the 3rd book in the series of what is already a 10-book series.
Title:The Woman in Black
Author:Kerry Wilkinson
Series:Detective Jessica Daniels, #3
Published:November 2016, Bookouture
Format:E-book, 308 pages
A severed hand is discovered in the centre of Manchester and the only clue Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel has to go on is CCTV footage of a woman in a long black robe placing it carefully on the ground.
With
a growing missing persons list and frantic families wondering if the
body part could belong to their absent loved ones, Jessica must solve
the case fast.When a second hand is found and a local
politician’s wife goes missing, Jessica is left struggling to find out
who the appendages belong to. The mother of missing Lewis Barnes, is
convinced his girlfriend, twenty-six year-old January Forrester is
responsible, but something doesn’t add up. Who is the mysterious woman
in black and how is she connected to the abandoned body parts?Then, unnervingly, a detached finger arrives in the post for Jessica – and it’s clear that someone knows exactly who she is.
A totally gripping and chilling thriller that will have you completely hooked to the very last page.
About the Author: Kerry Wilkinson has been busy since turning thirty.
His
first Jessica Daniel novel, Locked In, is a number one ebook
bestseller, while the series as a whole has sold more than a million
copies.
He
has written a fantasy-adventure trilogy for young adults, a second
crime series featuring private investigator Andrew Hunter, plus the
standalone thriller, Down Among The Dead Men.
Originally
from the county of Somerset, Kerry has spent far too long living in the
north of England, picking up words like ‘barm’ and ‘ginnel’.
When he’s short of ideas, he rides his bike or bakes cakes. When he’s not, he writes it all down.
Authors Links:
Books in the Detective Jessica Daniels series:
1. Locked In
2. Vigilante
2.5 As If By Magic
3. The Woman in Black
4. Think of the Children
5. Playing With Fire
6. Thicker Than Water
7. Behind Closed Doors
8. Crossing the Line
9. Scarred for Life
10. For Richer, For Poorer
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THE WOMAN IN BLACK
By Kerry Wilkinson
EXTRACT
CHAPTER ONE
Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel
swept the strand of long dark-blonde hair away from her face and looked down at
the object in front of her before saying the only thing that came to mind. ‘Well, it’s definitely a hand.’
The man standing next to her
nodded in agreement. ‘Blimey, nothing gets past you, does it?’
Jessica laughed. ‘Oi. It’s just,
you never know what you’re going to get, do you? When I was in uniform, I once got
sent out because there were reports of a dead animal blocking a road, and it
was only someone’s coat. For all we knew, this “severed hand” could have been
part of a kid’s doll.’
Detective Inspector Jason
Reynolds looked at the scene in front of them, nodding.
‘You’re right but this ain’t a
kid’s toy.’
The appendage was greying, and it
blended with the patch of concrete where it had been left. Jessica thought it
looked fairly hardened, as if the fingers would be stiff and awkward to move,
even though the digits were splayed and the hand was flat to the ground. Given
the clean-looking cut at the point where it would have once been connected to
someone’s wrist, Jessica was surprised there was no blood on the ground around
it. She didn’t want to touch it. She stepped closer and crouched, peering
towards the small stump indicating where the ring finger had been neatly sliced
off. It looked as if the area had been burned after the amputation to stop any
infection, and she wondered if the finger had been removed before or after the
rest of the hand.
Jessica stood and stepped
backwards out of the small white tent into the heat of the morning sunshine.
Reynolds was just behind her. A tall black officer, with an outwardly friendly
demeanour, he could be as tough as anyone she knew when he wanted to be. She
walked towards the edge of the police tape surrounding the scene, stopping
before she got too close to the nearby uniformed officer who was preventing
passers-by from getting too good a look.
‘What do you reckon happened to
the missing finger?’ she asked.
‘Who knows? It looks as if it was
cut off as cleanly as the hand itself,’ Reynolds replied.
‘Do you think the person it’s taken
from is dead?’
Reynolds blew out through his
teeth as he squinted into the sun. ‘Probably. We’ll have to check the records
to see if any remains found in the past year or two are missing a hand. There’s
nothing to indicate it definitely belongs to someone from our area, so we’ll
have a bit of work to do. The way it’s been preserved makes it hard to tell
whether it’s an old victim or someone who was recently attacked. Plus, whoever
left it has been very careful.’
‘Not much to go on, is there?’
Jessica said. ‘No tattoos or anything.’
‘I know. Given its shape with the
wider fingers I’d bet it was a man’s hand, but that could just be minor
decomposition. It looks as if it has been kept carefully. We’re going to have
to wait for the forensics team to see if they can find anything.’
‘Yeah, you’ve got to hand
it to the lab boys, they do a top job.’
Reynolds looked at Jessica,
eyebrows raised. ‘I really don’t think stand-up comedy is the career for you.’
Jessica grinned back. ‘Oh come
on. Just because you’ve been promoted, it doesn’t mean you have to stop
laughing at my jokes.’
‘I don’t remember ever laughing
at your jokes.’
‘All right, fine, be grumpy. What
are we going to do next?’
Reynolds looked around at the surrounding
buildings. ‘The thing is, this is the centre of Manchester, the second or third
biggest city in the country. Just look at the cameras.’ He pointed out the CCTV
units mounted high on the nearby shops, hotels and flats. ‘This is Piccadilly
Gardens. They couldn’t have picked a more public spot if they tried. Whoever
left this wanted it to be found.’ He paused, as if pondering what he wanted to
do. ‘If you take a constable and look through the footage from last night, I’ll
start working through the nationwide missing persons’ reports to see if any of
the reported victims are missing a hand. By the time we’ve gone through all
that, hopefully, we might have some test results back to give us gender and age
of the victim.’
Jessica looked to the areas the
inspector had pointed out. Piccadilly Gardens was one of the main meeting
points in the centre of Manchester. The middle part was a mixture of grassy
park areas surrounded by benches and fountains, along with concreted and paved
sections for people to walk. One side was dominated by a bus and tram station, another
lined by a wide walkway and shops. Looming over the top of the area was a hotel,
and a road with more shops edged along it.
Jessica looked back towards the
area where the hand had been found, just underneath one of the fountains next
to a bench. Unless someone had dropped it, which made some very odd assumptions
about the types of thing people carried around with them, it seemed clear the
hand had been purposely left.
Jessica could see at least seven
security cameras scanning the area, one of which was swivelling high on a pole
around fifty feet away from where she was standing. Three other similar cameras
were placed around the square. She knew they were linked into a set of other
CCTV cameras throughout the city, the images feeding back to a central security
point that was manned twenty-four hours a day. Most people thought the cameras
were constantly watched by police officers, but the operators were a private
security firm paid for by the council.
As she scanned around, she could
see two other cameras attached to the hotel and a further one high above a shop
front. She figured footage from those would be kept somewhere on their
respective sites.
Jessica felt the warmth of the
June sun on her arms and thought about spending the rest of the day indoors,
watching camera footage from the night before.
‘Whoever left it could have at
least picked a rainy day,’ she said to no one in particular.
**** You can purchase The Woman in Black on Amazon
Never heard of this author or series before but I'm hoping my library has the first one in the system so I can give it a try!
-Kimberly @ Turning the Pages