CLOSING THE DISTANCE

Closing the Distance is a clever, modern thriller where nothing is as it at first seems. PI Jack Shepherd - widower, father, poetry aficionado and reluctant but efficient bruiser - runs his faintly haphazard business from a Bristol that both soothes his soul with its natural beauty and irks the hell out of him with its unnatural town-planning. On a day that begins with threats by a local crime-lord and ends with a former client being washed up on the banks of the Bristol Channel, he receives an unusual proposition. A striking-looking woman appears in his office and hires him to find herself. What unfolds from then on cleverly weaves together seemingly disparate strands that stretch from Kosovo through rural Suffolk, and into the mysterious Forest of Dean, emphasising the point that contemporary criminality is a game without frontiers. But will Shepherd be able to join the links and find his client again before dangerous pursuers get to her first?