Lethal Justice
By Robert McCracken
It’s time to finish what he started…
James Guy has just been paroled from prison, after serving a sentence for abducting DI Tara Grogan.
A sex offender with an affinity for drugging his victims, he now reports to a parole officer, and pretends to be trying to pull his life together.
But all he really wants is to buy a van, get back to what he loves best, and finish what he started with Tara Grogan.
When a headless body is discovered, splayed on a wooden pentagram with a quote from the Book of Proverbs attached, Detective Superintendent Harold Tweedy has a flashback to a crime committed 25 years earlier, one that claimed the life of his friend, Alistair Bailey.
Harold knows he was mixed up in a cult, called the Church of the Crystal Water, and that Alistair had left his wife after she begged him to leave the church. But he refused and shortly after turned up dead, his head missing.
Tara Grogan responds to a call after a head is found on a spike in Stanley Park. Soon, headless bodies begin showing up all over Liverpool, and Grogan and her partner realise it’s all connected to Bailey’s murder a quarter century earlier.
They start to dig into the secretive church, only to discover another, more sinister church, known as the Vera Deitate. Tales of orgies and drug use are connected to the church, as well as some famous names.
When Dinsdale Kirkman, child of a priest and priestess in the church during the time of Alistair Bailey’s murder, Tara knows she is on the right path, and is determined to solve the case.
But the more she digs, the more convoluted it all becomes. And with James getting closer and closer to Tara, time is fast running out for the young Detective.
With twist and turns worthy of Dan Brown, Lethal Justice is an unsettling crime story that will leave you wondering if anyone is as they seem…
Robert McCracken has a PhD in Food Chemistry and has worked for thirty years in research and development relating to issues of global food safety. He has published many papers in scientific journals, and acted as both peer reviewer and editor. An Early Grave is his first work published by Endeavour Press.
