The Lady in the Park

Three years ago DCI Jim Domino caught a serial killer who is now behind bars.  But Jim was suspended from the Met for failing to follow the correct procedure when interviewing the killer – all because he wanted the man to keep talking and reveal the whereabouts of a missing woman whom Jim believed might still be alive.

Now the Met would like Jim to rejoin, but he’s happy running a private-detective agency where he employs four other detectives in Peckham where he lives. 

When a popular mother of six is found unconscious on an outdoor ping-pong table in a local park, Jim investigates. He is helped by his colleagues: feisty Kylie Jones; martial-arts instructor Clayton Ginevra; computer geek Stefan Popkiewicz; and superficially dull McCormick, former cop and recently sacked security chief of a west-end store.  

Jim was widowed when his two daughters were children.  Now he often looks after his six-year-old grandson Danny, when his daughter Laura, a professional jazz singer, is out working at night. Grandfather and grandson are close, and Danny sometimes helps with an investigation by pointing to something that Jim has missed.

 The search for the villain who assaulted the lady in the park leads Jim and his crew into a maelstrom of drug dealing, people trafficking and organised crime. Simultaneously they take on more mundane problems such as         

shoplifting, money laundering, homophobia and a peeping Tom. Behind the intriguing plot, The Lady in the Park is  about love, grief, childhood and the good in most people.