Cath Staincliffe

Janine Lewis is Manchester's first female Detective Chief Inspector. She's also a single mother to three demanding children, and pregnant with a fourth and she has her first murder to investigate. An elderly dying man and a seven-year-old child are the only witnesses. This isn't going to be an easy case to crack for the new DCI...

DC Rachel Bailey’s boss thinks her new recruit has bags of raw talent but straight-laced DC Janet Scott, her reluctant partner in Manchester's Murder Squad, has her doubts. Together Scott and Bailey must hunt a killer, but a life fighting crime can be no life at all...

Back at work after maternity leave, DCI Janine Lewis finds herself in the thick of two major investigations. The battered body of a young woman is recovered from the River Mersey and a schoolgirl is killed in a hit and run. As Janine and her team fight to unravel the story behind each death, she struggles with equally demanding dramas at home.

She's a single parent. A private eye. And liking it. Until, that is, Mrs Hobbs turns up asking Sal Kilkenny to find her missing son. Sal's search takes her through the Manchester underworld, a wasteland of deprivation and petty theft, of well-heeled organised crime and, ultimately, murder. Would she have taken the job on if she had known what she was getting herself into? The first Sal Kilkenny mystery.

A blaze at an abandoned chapel turns out to be more than just arson when the body of a man who has been shot twice is discovered in the ashes. Detective Constable Rachel Bailey and her partner, DC Janet Scott must put aside their own troubles if they are to solve this murder investigation.