His gentle story is more of a puzzle where readers are asked to look at the evidence shared throughout the book and find the killer before their identity is revealed. June 2014. Oliver Cole graduates from Hendon Police College as a Detective Constable and heads off to his choice of posting to Northumbria Police in the North East of England. Cole is a shy but highly regarded new recruit with a talent for puzzle solving; from his first day he comes under the instructional wing of long-serving Detective Chief Inspector Jack Collier and his education really begins. Within weeks the body of a young girl is found neatly laid out on a gravestone in a local churchyard with an unusual addition of a noose around her neck. Cole is instructed to work with DCI Collier to find the killer but soon another body is found in identical circumstances and a picture begins to unfold of a serial killer.

    While some of these narratives are loosely based in fact, they are written with a large dollop of literary license. The characters are not "politically correct" in today's parlance and speak in the vernacular of their time and culture. Some of them you will like ...others you may not. No disrespect or offense is intended in the telling. These are their stories.The lead story "Fat of The Land" was a past runner-up in the national Raymond Carver short story awards.

    Most of the faces in the audience are familiar to him, except one. David Hopkirk walks into the West End Spiritualist church in Glasgow and slits his own throat in the middle of a demonstration. But why?Patrick is then catapulted into a case, which sees the death of a child, a failed court case and a family torn apart. Soon Patrick will have all the pieces of the puzzle but will he be able to fit them together in time?