Thank you to the publishers for this review copy! I had no option but to dive straight in after how much I loved Salt Lane! I have been plaguing everyone about this guy - and only 2 people I have asked had heard of him before..... So don't delay - we have all been missing out. Deadland is book 2 in the series, each is a stand alone story but as always reading in order gives you more character storyline. So my verdict on this book is excellent, and I would be very happy to dive straight into book 3 if it was written... so instead I may very well have to check out his backlist of books. Great characters, good pace and tension plus wonderful characters that we are learning more about with each book. Can't wait to meeting him in Waterstones Durham, 2pm 20 feb 2019. Guys, please all read his books!

Deadland, sees William Shaw, bring back Detective Sergeant Alexandra Cupidi, for a roller coast ride of a thriller. To me this is the best of the Cupidi thrillers so far, and with every outing, this series gets better. Ds Cupidi has been given a strange case that is possibly a murder, as an arm has been found in an artwork at the Turner Contemporary Gallery in Margate. While everybody else seems to be on the case of a dead small time villain, she has the weird one. Nobody takes her seriously, not her colleagues not the owners of the artwork. It does not help that a celebrity’s art foundation owns the work and they are not taking the discovery seriously. At the same time two seventeen year old boys, Tap and Sloth are looking for somebody to mug of their mobile phone. They snatch a bag off a man and ride away on their stolen moped. When the owner of the bag calls the stolen mobile phone in the bag and demands the phone, Tap sends his uncle to deliver the phone. He does not return. When the owner tracks them down, they go on the run, staying away for their own safety. The more Cupidi investigates, the weirder the case seems to become, especially when nobody can find the art broker and the model wife and owner of the collection. As the case progresses, she has to deal with the internal police politics, along with her own daughter and the desolate Kent coast. She is trying to find the owner of the arm, the owner of the art and her paths cross with the two runaway’s case, what she does not realise they are pawns in a bigger game. The closer she gets to solving the case little does she realise how close to her own front door things will come. DS Alexander Cupidi is an excellent police heroine, forever fighting, never stops being a copper, even if it means arresting another copper. The unforgiving landscape, the unforgiving crimes merge into one and build up a brilliant thriller. Once again William Shaw is a master storyteller, who gives us a web of events that need unpicking to discover the truth. Deadland is a brilliant evocation of both Cupidi, her troubled life and the harsh Kent marshes around her. This is a brilliant crime thriller and I cannot wait for Cupidi’s next outing.

It is good to see that the author is honing his writing skills in this new series set against the backdrop of Dungeness headland. Deadland, is partly focused on this surreal promontory of shingle, as the lead detective, DS Alexander Cupidi lives there with her daughter Zoë. Now 17years old, Zoë is much more challenging, but Alex hopes that William South freshly released from prison can rekindle his mentoring relationship with Zoë over their shared interest of birdwatching. All domestic considerations are shelved when a strange case is assigned to her when an arm is found within an exhibit in Margate. This takes the action out and around the county of Kent. Initially Alex has to fight to keep her team as more pressing investigations arise. The first part of the book is full of suspense as Shaw alternates between Alex’s investigation and a hapless pair of teenage criminals who, bang on trend, try to steal mobile phones while riding past on a stolen moped. They think their luck is in when then get away with a state of the art phone and the owner is prepared to pay over the odds to get it back. Meanwhile Alex is involved in the complicated and secretive world of art foundations and patronage. The boys, known as Tap and Sloth quickly realise that the owner of the phone is more desperate than they could ever imagine to recover his property. To the point that their lives are in danger and they are not safe in their usual haunts and neighbourhood. The stories cross over in alternating chapters with the police procedural having deeper links to a more serious crime while the lads are left on the run, vulnerable and without friends. Shaw’s writing achieves both the steady building of plot as well as the terror associated with an old fashioned chase as the young men desperately try to avoid the phone man who they suspect has already killed someone close to them. This is breathless stuff and the characterisation of these two youths, incompetent thieves but perhaps just streetwise enough to survive, is very realistic. This is powerful writing and covers not just criminality but friendship, loyalty and personal discovery. Their relationship is stretched under the fear of being caught and the bond appears strong. Meanwhile the police are having difficulties within their own ranks and when Alex takes Jill under her wing she finds out more as her senior officer than she wants to know. A conflict of interest arises that threatens to derail the wider investigation. All absorbing stuff that ratchets up the tension and then Alex is further undermined by her daughters solitude, secretiveness and political activism. With so much going on Part 2 arrives and Shaw now dwells on the police work while leaving Tap and Sloth in deadly jeopardy. Breathless and increasingly violent. Alex finds out personal truths and when imaging perhaps two other guys of her daughters age, reported as missing and seen fleeing from a crime scene she becomes muddled in her own direction and thinking. It all becomes a riveting high tension investigation as more victims are revealed, and like an artistic collage the cases seemingly converge but Alex just can’t see the bigger picture. As in the previous book, Shaw has a heart stopping climax to this novel where those Alex cares for are placed at risk and she must push herself beyond her own safe place. Never confident that others can resolve what she feels instinctively drawn to sort out. Inspiration comes from the location of this unique headline and Dungeness is again the star of this piece of literature. Long may that continue and hopefully readers will visit this place not in the hope to catch naked yoga but share in its serenity and delight in a bit of birding. William Shaw is growing in stature, in his ability to write and identify issues in society. His works goes from strength to strength and Deadland cements his place as a must read author.

The latest addition to William Shaw’s superlative DS Alexandra Cupidi series following The Birdwatcher and Salt Lane, Deadland returns us to the haunting coastal area of Dungeness, and two compelling investigations for Cupidi and her colleagues… It’s no secret that I think William Shaw is one of the most accomplished, and consistently good crime authors at work in Britain today, and I always embark on his new books with a slight nervous tingle, hoping that each will be as satisfying as the previous. Which brings us to Deadland which was everything I hoped it would be (massive sigh of relief). What I love with this series (and his previous trilogy featuring DS Cathal Breen and PC Helen Tozer) is the way that Shaw, in common with his coastal location, ebbs and flows with his characters, moving them around like chess pieces bringing them back and forwards to the centre of the storyline with Capaldi being at the rooted centre. Consequently, this book reintroduces us to disgraced ex-police officer William South from The Birdwatcher, and where Salt Lane was very much involved with the generational differences of Capaldi, her mother and her daughter, this book switches the focus more onto Capaldi’s colleagues, alongside the central investigations. I think it’s worth drawing attention to this, to emphasize the sheer quality of Shaw’s characterisation, and how roundly and believably drawn his characters are. Capaldi is a professional working mother with a recalcitrant teenage daughter, South is a man obviously tarnished by his prison experience, constable Jill Ferriter experiencing professional and personal difficulties, a diversion into the weird and wonderful inhabitants of the ‘art’ world and, at the heart of the book two wayward teenage boys, Tap and Sloth, with their own trials and tribulations. Without a doubt, each and every one of these characters are brimming with realism, so that you feel totally part of their contrasting experiences and world views. The narrative voice of each is precise, and authentic, and this is particularly true of Tap and Sloth, and the changes we see in their brash teenage bravado as the book progresses. With subtle changes in rhythm and syntax, Shaw brings all these voices to life, and with it an even greater connection to them for the reader. Another element of this book that I enjoyed was the striking juxtaposition of the two investigations that Capaldi and her colleagues are tasked with. Throughout his books Shaw has always tackled difficult social issues be they of the 1960s or now, and the fact that this book straddled two very economically and materially different worlds was an interesting facet of the book. From the dripping wealth and pretentiousness of the art world, to the very different world inhabited by the teenage protagonists, Shaw retains the tension of both, and how crime bridges all social strata and class. It’s also interesting to observe the changes of attitude in the police characters between both investigations, and where their sympathies lie, and how their own attitudes reveal themselves. Indeed, the fears and frustrations at play in this book, in both their professional and personal lives too, are as finely balanced with the arc of the plot, holding the whole book in balance, as Shaw assuredly takes us between these contrasting worlds and characters. Sometimes with two storylines playing out there is a tension in the reader to return to one more swiftly than the other, but I think this was neatly avoided with both strands of the story having their own particular pace and moments of peril. I must confess that my former blissful ignorance of the art world kept me wholly engaged as the book progressed, and admittedly none of my preconceptions about the inhabitants of this world were largely disproved. Which was nice. So a glowing review for Deadland and another heartfelt plea to discover this author for yourselves. With pitch perfect characterisation, immersive storylines, a striking use of location, and accomplished writing and plotting, there is so much to enjoy in this series. Highly recommended.

It’s just a simple thing, a petty crime, and they have done it before. But the two teenagers Tap and Sloth do not have the least idea what chain of events they trigger when robbing a bag from a random commuter. They find two mobiles in it, one a very expensive iPhone, the other an old-fashioned throw-away phone. Of course they cannot really sell the iPhone but maybe Tap’s mother’s ex Mickey can do that. The next day, Mickey is found brutally murdered. But that is not the only case DS Alexandra Cupidi’s team has to deal with: in the local museum an arm has been found in a sculpture after visitors had increasingly complained about the smell. Whom does this arm belong to? And who would commit such a crime? I have devoured William Shaw’s series on Breen and Tozer in the 1960s London and was waiting curiously for something new by the author. “Deadland”, actually the second instalment of this series, again is a murder investigation, but hardly comparable to the other series which quite logically comes with the setting in modern days Kent. Yet, as expected, there is a cleverly constructed plot which connects seemingly loose strands and keeps suspense high throughout the novel. Apart from the murder investigation, which could hardly be surpassed, I most of all liked the characters in the novel. They are all quite unique and individual. First of all, Alex Cupidi who is a clever detective but also single mother to a rebellious teenage girl. I really appreciated how she copes with her daughter’s troubles and even though she doesn’t approve of all of her decisions, tries to keep connected to Zoe and show understanding. Also the two good-for-nothing boys turn out to be good kinds in their own ways and know good from bad. Even though it is just a side-line in the plot, I found Constable Jill Ferriter’s struggles after having shared the bed with a colleague after too much drinking and regretting it later was quite interesting. She did something stupid she regretted afterwards, but there is no easy way out of the situation, first of all, she still has to work with that colleague and second, what would happen if she reported this assault? Not only since she is police and does not want to be a victim, but also because this could seriously undermine her position in a mostly male job. All in all, a brilliant read that leaves nothing to wish for.