Only the Brave (DS Allie Shenton 3)

Travel Guide

Travel around Stoke on Trent with Mel Sherratt

48 hours in Stoke on Trent. Now this is not the kind of agenda you’d want to follow in real life but in a fictional setting, it’s more than an adventure weekend!

With the case of double dealing growing by the day, Allie Shenton is back but at her most vulnerable, not surprising as she is being stalked. As she continues to investigate the murder of Jordan Johnson, she gets further and further embroiled in the web of deceit that seems to cover much of the city of Stoke. One character is described thus –

Growing up with two older brothers on one of the meanest streets in Stoke on Trent….

The community in and around the flats where the body is found is a cold,  dubious and insular place to be. Most have alibis of where they were on the night it happened but the threads of truth seemed to be frayed and barely holding the various stories together.

Enter Allie Shenton trying to pick her way through this jungle of lies and it’s a hard, gritty path she treads. Smell the fear and the anticipation as one thing leads to another, the tension of the stalker emphasising one woman’s fight to carry on regardless. Police work is a series of tough calls, with the team sacrificing everything apart from the next potential lead.

He parked on Ford Green Road noticing a few more neighbours’ cars nearby…

The 48 Hours in Stoke is a gritty and very realistic ride. The sense of a closed and insular community reveals a disparate bunch of people, each with their own set of values, reasons for telling the story they tell, and the overall effect on this crime in the wider community.
Over a small amount of time, a puzzle is set and the clock is set ticking. Whether the pieces will be blown to smithereens before the time runs out is the exhilarating journey Mel Sherratt takes you on..