When the Bough Breaks

Traffic cop Sal Delaney's past is catching up with her . . .

Sunday Times best-selling author David Mark delivers a pulse-pounding new dark and gritty police procedural series set in the north of England, with a complex, intriguing female protagonist.

North of England. Cumbria. Salome Delaney didn't have a great start in life. But her abusive childhood came to a tragic conclusion with the killing of her tyrant mother, Trina, by a jealous ex-boyfriend. At least, that's what the police say. Sal has never believed kind Wulf, who tried to protect her from her mother's dark side, could have committed such a crime, but the evidence was irrefutable . . . and who else could have done it?

Now an adult, with a good job as a Collison Investigation Officer, Sal's done her best to put the past behind her. But one snowy morning she's called to an accident scene, and she recognizes the body - Barry Ford, the man her mother left Wulf for, all those years ago.

It soon becomes clear this wasn't just an accident - it was murder. And Wulf, now out of prison, lives very close by . . .

The question of who really killed her mother has haunted Sal her whole life, but as she launches a complex investigation, which gets darker by the hour, she starts to wonder if she really wants to know the answer after all.

This nail-biting series launch will appeal to fans of David Mark's critically acclaimed DS McAvoy series and readers of Denise Mina, Val McDermid, Ian Rankin and Peter Robinson.