In Emma Salisbury's last novel in the DS Coupland series, Absent, it was a kid's murder in Salford that provided the thrills and gruesome spills in a whodunit mystery on our own doorsteps*.
For the latest DS Coupland novel, Flesh and Blood, it's adventures in the underworld as the Salford Precinct cop goes in search of an arsonist who torched a residential care home in Pendlebury leaving destruction and death in their wake.
But why does the top gangster in Salford want to help the police with their enquiries, with methods not quite in the policing handbook? Like with machetes and baseball bats and youths with 'faces obscured by scarves'...and 'hoods pulled up'...in Laburnum Street?
This time, it's personal all round as the Detective Sergeant and the gang leader have huge vested interests in finding the killer. However, as usual in Emma Salisbury fiction, there's a rich, rich seam of research and layers of background that makes the fiction seem more real, the characters more alive...and dangerous.
Within Flesh and Blood there's problems with care homes skipping good practice to increase profits...issues with cruel care workers exploiting their patients...massively disturbed teenage kids, and cops short-cutting accepted behaviour...
...Add drug deals to kids, a nasty hit and run, and some more revenge attacks and it's all in there but in that page turning, rip-roaring, web weaving, can't-put-down format that takes this author into best selling, blockbusting territory that's screaming out for a tv series.
If Emma Salisbury's last book was a must for social workers and cops, this latest novel is required reading for care workers and cops...There's never a dull moment in Salford. And never a dull moment in the DS Coupland series, set on our doorsteps and inviting us into a world we may be all too familiar with...
Flesh and Blood by Emma Salisbury
Get it on Kindle £3.99 or in paperback £8.99 - click here
For more details on the author and her other books - click here
*See previous Salford Star review of Emma Salisbury's Absent – click here
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