Today I’m joining the blog tour for Broken Wings. My review is written with thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me on the tour and to the author for providing the extract.

Blurb:

When the body of a young woman is discovered in a remote North Yorkshire barn DI Zara Fisher is called back to duty before she’s ready. Haunted by her own past and exiled to an anger-management group for “difficult” officers, she’s forced to share therapy with three equally broken colleagues. But when their so-called routine cases begin to echo one another, they uncover a web of secrets stretching from the North Yorkshire Dales to darkened corridors of power.
Broken Wings is a darkly humourous, rain-lashed thriller about guilt, obsession, and the dangerous comforts of denial.

Extract (from Chapter 10):

DI Zara Fisher has just met her newly transferred Detective Sergeant, Pan Demetriou, in an anger management therapy group. Demetriou waits her to return to the CID office, a re-purposed old cleaners’ cupboard.

 

The door opens, Fisher shoving it against a mound of files that quickly re-purpose themselves as temporary doorstop, the top layers sliding off, skittering across the floor to come to rest against the waste bin.

‘I won’t transfer. I won’t ask for one no matter what shit you give me!’ Demetriou shouts, standing feet planted firmly on the ground or at least the sticky carpet with stains of unknown origin that passes for it.

‘Wow. Steady Tiger. Who’s shoved that massive tent pole up your backside?’ she asks, a shove of her shoulder fully opening the door.

‘I’m sticking. Making a fist of it. You won’t push me out.’

‘Is this anything to do with the meeting, or do you just have a whole load of mommy issues that we didn’t get round to talking about? If so, Malcolm’s going to wet himself when he hears.’

He stares ahead, eyes narrowing. ‘I’m not a quitter. You won’t get rid of me without a fight.’

Fisher slumps into the chair nearest the filing cabinet, the one he’d noticed has the words ‘Ice Queen’ written in sharpie across the back, the ink only visible against the dark grey background when the light hits it in a particular way. Given the narrow slit of a window at the top of one wall means there’s little light brave enough to enter, he assumes the graffiti has passed her by.

‘Listen, DS Demetriou, I have neither the time nor inclination to plot your early exit, so, we’re stuck with each other. That being the case, you might want to remove that stick from up your bum and sit down.’

‘I…I’m sorry, Ma’am. Getting off on the wrong foot and all. I mean-’

‘Oh god, please don’t tell me you’re one of those needy emotional intelligence types? Look, you shouted at me, I shouted at you, it’s passed. Done.’ She prods a pile of files on the desk that tumble to the floor, clearing space to plonk her feet. ‘It’s dusted, never to be spoken of. Water under the bridge.’

‘I just-’ He stops. ‘Thank you, Ma’am. Understood.’

 

 

 

She tosses a file she’s taken out of her bag across the desk. ‘Have a look at that,’ she says, taking off her shoes.

He picks it up. It’s flimsy, seven sheets of typed A4. Three are the draft findings of the examination of a body discovered in an old farm building. White female, late twenties. The conclusion that whilst a final cause of death would be determined by autopsy, she’d almost certainly died from asphyxiation, hanging.

Fisher busies herself massaging her stockinged feet, whilst he scans the other pages: a description of the call out; the rope confirmed to be standard DIY builder’s nylon but with lengths of human hair wound into it.

He closes the folder, Fisher watching him. ‘Weird,’ he judges.

‘Hardly cutting-edge analysis, DS Demetriou. How about donning your best Poirot and elaborating a little?’

‘Seems a strange thing to do. I mean, suicide by hanging is a little old hat. Plenty better options these days. Not the choice of women, either. Quite a masculine end, like jumping off rooftops or under a train. Women tend to more feminine, more…graceful endings. Pills. Alcohol. Wrists in the bath.’ He pauses. ‘I don’t want to sound out of step – liable to cancellation – but when I started in CID back in Brum, this old school DI I was assigned to always held that his experience of women committing suicide was that they choose a means where they can better pose themselves. He said it’s almost like they’re more concerned how they’ll look when they’re found. Blokes tend to just want to get it done. Step in front of a bus or whatever, not bothered about the clear-up. Quite violent ends, on the whole.’

‘Well, neither you nor your old DI would be all that popular on Loose Women saying stuff like that about Instagram-able suicides, but there’s something to it. It’s what the statistics concerning means tell us. And we know statistics – unlike our raggedy scrotum PR conscious top team – never lie. So, hanging is suspicious, especially with the whole rope of human hair and shaved head thing. It might be a statement – you know, a last word comment on the patriarchy and women’s perception by society. She might have felt herself exploited or abused. But we’d have to know more about her to know for sure. Like if she was a Guardian reader.’

Demetriou frowns but decides to ignore her postscript. ‘What my old team called walking back the cat. Starting from her death in that building, the one certainty we have, and then tracking her movements and life backwards from that point – at least until we find an answer as to how and why. More vitally, if there’s a who involved other than the victim herself.’

‘Congratulations, DS Demetriou. You’ve won first prize in this week’s crime scene lottery. The prize is you get to shuffle through Missing Persons finding us a match. Once we know who we’re dealing with, we can start to figure what it was drove her to become Jane Doe.’

***

Broken Wings is available from Amazon.

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