Synopsis
Choose Your Parents Wisely
One missing girl and the whole city goes crazy.
It’s been three days, and now everyone in Brighton is looking for her. There is an army of police searching, her picture is on every front page, and the public can’t get enough of it. Gangs of good citizens are going door to door, turning their neighbours’ houses upside down, but still no one can find her.
For Brighton’s No.1 Private Detective, Joe Grabarz, it brings back too many memories of his first case, another missing girl, when he learnt too many lessons the hard way. No one was going door to door then. No one cared. But her mum and dad weren’t nearly as photogenic, nor quite so saintly.
It’s a lesson Joe learnt long ago that has come back to haunt him: choose your parents wisely.
Puchase Link: https://tomtrott.com/cypw
My review
This is the second book in the Brighton’s No. 1 Detective series (‘You Can’t Make Old Friends’ being the first) and it maintains the high standard set by the first book.
There’s a lot happening in this novel. Blink and you might miss it, so the book demands and deserves your full attention. There’s some jumping between storylines, but everything is well explained and it all falls into place as you read. The plot is excellent, as you’d expect from this author, and the novel is thoroughly compelling.
Joe develops as a character as we find out more about his background and what makes him tick. I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s more of an anti-hero than a hero, but that just makes him all the more engaging. He may cut corners legal-wise here and there in his investigations, but he’s upfront with us and straightforward with the people he encounters. There is a heart lurking under that ‘whatever’ exterior!
Very enjoyable.
Just to mention the classy cover too. The author is very professional in every respect and has produced a very impressive looking exterior for a top class story.
Author Bio – Born in Brighton, I went to school in here, worked many jobs here, and have never lived anywhere else. I first started writing at school, where I and a group of friends devised and performed comedy plays for assemblies, much to the amusement of our fellow pupils. The young ones would cheer (and the old ones would groan) as we stepped up onto the stage, the buzz was tangible. It has been with me ever since.
As an adult I have written a short comedy play that was performed at the Theatre Royal Brighton in May 2014 as part of the Brighton Festival; Daye’s Work, a television pilot for the local Brighton channel; and won the Empire Award (thriller category) in the 2015 New York Screenplay Contest. I published my first novel, You Can’t Make Old Friends, in 2016; my second, Choose Your Parents Wisely, in 2017, my third, The Benevolent Dictator, in 2018, and now my fourth, It Never Goes Away, in 2019. When I’m not writing books, I’m writing about writing, books, and film on Medium.
My inspirations as a writer come from a diverse range of storytellers, but I have a particular love for the works of Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Joel & Ethan Coen, Arthur Conan-Doyle, Daphne du Maurier, Alfred Hitchcock, Bryan Fuller, Ira Levin, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Towne, JRR Tolkien, and many many more books and films beside. If you can’t find me, or I’m not answering my phone, I’m probably at the cinema.
Social Media Links – www.twitter.com/tjtrott, www.facebook.com/tomtrottbooks, www.tomtrott.com, an
