Having not read the previous books in the series, it was difficult for me to keep up! Gripping book nonetheless and I think I will go back and start from the beginning. It is a tough read but that might be because I am missing some info from previous titles. Very well written.

A police detective book, visiting the brutal world of modern day slavery and the Immigrants out brigade. A book that is written so that you can almost smell the conditions in the house they stay in and the the greasy spoon cafe. A thought provoking book

Wonderful addition to the series. Gripping, well written and easy to read. I enjoyed this more than a few others writtten by this author.

An enjoyable read.
This was a really interesting plot, highlighting today's issues in a sensitive and carefully considered manner, while keeping the twists and turns expected. The plot flowed well and I was gripped from the start to the very unexpected ending.
The characters were realistic although not particularly endearing, though this in no way detracts from the book.
I would definitely add it to my bookshelf

Remain Silent by Susie Steiner is the third book in the DS Manon Bradshaw series. I was not aware of this and I have not read the previous books in the series. So, at first, I found it bit confusing to know what is going on. As I did not know the back story. If I had read the others it would have been 5 stars.
DS Manon is now working part time for Cambridgeshire Police force investigating cold cases Now married and has an adopted teenager named Fly. She is finding it hard juggling everything together. When on her day off she goes for a walk with her two-year-old son Teddy. and finds Lithuanian immigrant Lukas Balsys a migrant worker, hanging dead from a tree with a strange note pinned on him.
DS Manon helps with the investigation which delves into the exploitation of migrant workers, abuse, human trafficking and racism. She also must deal with her new boss that she does not get along with.
I thank Harper Collins and NetGalley for a copy of Remain silent. This story was a slow burner but, I found it well written and researched especially around migrant workers, the racism against them their exploitation. But I did not much care of the characters in this story. 4 stars from me.

Another good book in the Manon Bradshaw series which had me turning the pages until late into the night. This time Manon is investigating the apparent suicide of a Lithuanian farm worker, an investigation which takes her into the world of workers forced to 'repay' their passage to the UK whilst living in slum conditions. This is pitted against a political movement that wants the workers gone. This is far more than a police procedural, with some satire and also social commentary thrown in. I really enjoyed it. And if you read it, please don't close the book at the end of the story, take the time to read the acknowledgments. My thoughts are with you, Susie.

Remain Silent by Susie Steiner
Having read Missing Presumed and Persons Unknown and enjoyed the detective Manon Bradshaw with all of her foibles and problems. She was a real breath of fresh air in this genre. In this new story we learn more about Manon who is now newly married and coping with life with a toddler and her adopted adolescent son. She is busy working part time on cold cases for the police force and this enables her to have a more predictable work life balance.
Then on her way home she discovers the body of a Lithuanian immigrant hanging from a tree. Attached to the body is a strange note and she is immediately aware that this discovery is going to bring about a dramatic change in her life. She returns to full time work and sets about unravelling the mystery of this challenging case. A gripping read and also an interesting investigation into the life of 40 something mother struggling to cope with the demands of family and work life. I would like to thank the publishers and Net Galley for the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.

This is the first of Susie Steiner's books that I've read - and it won't be the last.

I've spent a very enjoyable 24 hours with this story calling me back to it again and again until I finished. DI Manon Bradshaw is investigating the hanging of a young Lithuanian, over in the UK trying to forge himself a new life with better prospects. A note on the body indicates foul play, yet the physical location of the death contradicts this possibility. You'll be frustrated trying to work it out!

I appreciated Susie Steiner's acknowledgements at the end, where she indicates her research on modern day slavery and that many of the examples in the text are based on real life. A sad, sad situation for us to be in.

3.5*

Set in Wisbech, a Fenland town, this police procedural novel centres around the immigration and slavery of Eastern European communities. Apparently a BBC programme from 2012 noted that there were “growing tensions” in the town because one-third of the population was said to be made up of Eastern Europeans.

A dark mystery, this book is fairly unrelenting in putting those of Wisbech (old and new) under the microscope. The main character, DCI Manon Bradshaw, puts herself under inspection too and constantly finds fault with herself, her husband and their relationship. She’s as hard on herself as she is on others. Indeed, sometimes it seemed to me to get in the way of the primary plot.

I really enjoyed viewing events from different character perspectives and the way in which events converged. The novel is well-written and kept me turning the pages. I also had no idea this was the third book in a series and it can easily be read as a stand-alone novel.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Susie Steiner and HarperCollins: The Borough Press for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is the third book in a series and I'd definitely suggest reading the first 2 before this one. Having said that, I have and I just can't get into these books, nor the characters.
Mahon is the lead character, a female detective with a partner, toddler and an adopted son. She juggles this family life with her work, but, she certainly doesn't do it without complaint!
She's an irritating character that I just couldn't warm to, or care about.

This storyline is around Mahon finding a man hanged in the woods and it then delves into the abuse of migrant workers. I found it slow and difficult to finish.

A good read for fans of Susie Steiner and for those who are enjoying this series. Not me, though.

A 2* OK read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to preview.

I understand that this book is number three in a series but can confirm it could be read as a stand alone. Having said that I found the various loose threads very irritating and distracting from what could have been a tighter plot. I was drawn to the story because it’s very on point for 2019/2020 Britain and was interested to find out more about the plight of migrants’ lives here in the U.K. Although this was part of the story, I felt it didn’t go deep enough and merely scratched the surface. I am sorry that Susie Steiner has had health problems and therefore I’m erring on the side of kindness with my three star review.

Beautifully written, utterly absorbing, and showing great sensitivity towards all of the characters. A really good, well rounded and intelligent crime novel

I really struggled with this book at the beginning but don’t know why. I put it down after getting to the half-way mark and read several other books before coming back to it. It was better second time around and I became quite engrossed towards the end. The body of a Lithuanian immigrant is found in suspicious circumstances and the story revolves around the investigation led by DI Manon Bradshaw. Along the way the reader gains some insight into the appalling living conditions and treatment of a group of immigrants in Cambridgeshire. We also learn something about the trials and tribulations of Manon Bradshaw’s personal life.
I look forward to reading more by this author and would like to thank NetGalley and Harper Collins for an advanced copy of the book.

would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this book

a man found hanging in a tree...
a house full of men from refugees


manon is back from maternity and back to her cold cases though she is pulled from that and put in charge of the investigation into the hanged man

i was getting into the storyline and looking forward to the cold case bit but i really struggled with this one,it is quite topical with the influx of refugees into our country but ii was hoping for more of the investigation into cold cases... not quite what i was hoping for....

but the characters were well established and it was well written

Working part time in the cold cases department of the Cambridgeshire police force, DI Manon Bradshaw wasn’t expecting to find herself caught up in another murder case. While out for a walk with her two-year-old son, she finds the body of a Lithuanian immigrant, Lukas Balsys, hanging from a tree. Faced with a conspiracy of silence among the rest of the Lithuanian community, Manon finds herself involved in one of the most complex cases of her career.

Remain Silent is a hard-hitting story of the poor treatment and exploitation of immigrant workers and how they are viewed by certain sectors of society. It was hard not to feel anything other than anger at how these people, leaving their country hoping for a better life, were immediately herded into unsanitary housing, working at the beck and call of cruel gangmasters. While it was understandable that the local residents did not want these people living amongst them due to the filthy conditions of their house, Susie Steiner’s backstories of these immigrants paints most of them in a favourable light, leaving you with nothing but sympathy for their plight.

As in previous books, Manon is an excellent character and is written so well that she could be real. Great at her job but struggling to manage it alongside her family life, her world threatens to collapse when she is given some bad news about a loved one. Again, I loved the realism of this part of the plot as we see the two sides of Manon, struggling internally with the news yet trying to remain pragmatic at the same time. In some books of this genre, the family life of the detective can detract from the plot, but not here. Her adopted son, Fly, who we first met in Missing, Presumed, is a delight of a character and I enjoyed seeing how he is growing up to be a fine young man.

Remain Silent has a gritty plot which, at times, is not for the faint of heart. If you haven’t read any of Susie Steiner’s work before, then I can highly recommend starting with Missing Presumed as once you’ve read that one, you will definitely want to read the rest of the series.

As a footnote, I would just like to say that it’s not often that the acknowledgments of a book move me as much as the ones did in Remain Silent. I would like to wish Susie Steiner all the best for her fight and hope that we see more Manon books for many years to come.

Remain Silent, the third in Susie Steiner’s series about DI Manon Bradshaw, is not an easy book to write about. Superficially it is a police procedural, and like all good police procedurals these days it deals with a subject that is of current social concern: in this instance the exploitation and abuse of migrant workers and the ill-feeling expressed towards them by some members of the communities in which they are housed. However, there is much more to this book than simply a straightforward narrative journey taking us through the crime, the investigation and the arrest, and that ‘more’ is to do with the difficulties that  Manon faces as a working mother, trying to combine her commitment to her children with an ailing partner and a demanding and responsible job.  So what’s new, you might well ask. Almost every police procedural that you pick up features a main protagonist who has major difficulties in their personal lives. Absolutely, the difference here is that the difficulties that Manon faces are realistic. She isn’t trying to deal with the fact that somebody has knifed both her parents, that she is in a same sex relationship and nobody must know, or even that she has an illegitimate child by another police officer. She is simply facing the day-to-day problems that must make life so complicated for someone whose job means that she doesn’t know when she’s next going to be able to get home and play her part in family responsibilities. Steiner’s books are not just police procedurals, they are also about the problems faced by professional workers who feel themselves torn between two different sets of commitments. So, with that in mind, I’m going to split what I have to say about Remain Silent into two sections. Firstly, a bit about the crime and the social situation which gives rise to it and secondly some thoughts about what Steiner has to say on the subject of the realities of trying to cope with the pressures of both a job and a family in a world that looks for perfection in how a woman handles both.

Steiner’s novels are set in the Fenlands and as such it was only a matter of time before she tackled the question of immigrant workers - the way in which they are brought into the country and the exploitation and abuse that is their lot once they arrive here. In this case, the plight of a particular group of Lithuanian men working in a chicken factory is brought to police notice when one of them is found hanging from a tree. The question is whether he was murdered or if his death was suicide; the answer will dictate how the death is investigated. Steiner splits her narrative between the enquiry and the background into the journey two of the migrants, Matis and Lukas, make from their home in Klaipeda.  Matis has been the driving force behind the decision having

made the common mistake of thinking relocation equals reinvention, thinking his old self wouldn’t follow him across Europe.
Lukas has been less keen. He is leaving behind a loving family and a girlfriend, who will eventually be used as hostage for his silence and compliance. It is Lukas’s body that has been found.

The people responsible for the exploitation and abuse of Matis and his companions are fellow Lithuanians, running the usual racket of taking the wages of the men to ‘pay’ for their journey and living costs. However, local people are not adverse to making use of their services as well if it means that they have to fork out less than they would to a British worker. Even the Tuckers, who live next door to the house where the men are billeted, and who complain bitterly about the ill-kept accommodation and the rubbish-filled front garden, are quite happy to have a little cheap plumbing done on the quiet, and the gang master has got a nice little sideline in garden paving on the go. The Tuckers, however, are not the only people to complain about the presence of the migrants in their community. Onto the scene march the supporters of One Wisbech: English jobs for English people. Stop the flood. Foreigners go home. Led by Dean Singlehurst they troop down the cul-de-sac where the migrants live, waving their banners and shouting their slogans. If Lukas’s death does turn out to have been murder the suspect pool is pretty wide.

In many respects Steiner doesn’t have anything particularly new to say about a problem that has been well documented by press and news reports. What she does do, however, is reflect the ongoing frustration and helplessness that is felt both by the police who are trying to deal with the legal issues raised and the ordinary people who have to live with the situation on a day-to-day basis, be they the migrants themselves or the other people in their communities. And this, I think, is where the strength of her writing lies. One of the points that she picks up on is the way in which there is so often a knee-jerk reaction to a situation about which we actually know very little and how inappropriate that reaction therefore is. Knowing very little, she says, is fine if you know that you know very little: that you know that you don’t know what you don’t know. The problem comes with those people who don’t know that they don’t know what they don’t know:

this is the age of stupid. In place of knowledge people are exalting their gut feeling as if that feeling is more valuable than being informed. When actually, what gut feeling generally is, is prejudice.
Steiner also has important points to make about the consequences of the way in which society has encouraged, in particular, men to feel that they have a right to be happy and empowered all the time.  She speaks of

marginalised white men of a certain age.

These men are equally wrongfooted by clever young women, clever young Muslims, clever young gay men – anyone who appears to have access to the crucial information they lack. Information about modernity, how to live, how to prosper, how it all works.
Even Mark, Manon’s  partner, when he has taken ill, refuses to talk about how he is and what is happening. Mark is a good man but admitting that he is in a situation in which he is powerless is something that he simply doesn’t know how to do. That way frustration lies and frustration often leads to some sort of inappropriate outburst.

And then there is the way in which she addresses Manon’s problems juggling a relationship, her children, her friends, and her work. Rather than worrying about whether or not her double life is about to be exposed, or her adoptive brother is about to  crawl out of the woodwork and attack her, or her family‘s history of involvement in drug-running is going to come to light, Manon is much more concerned with the same sort of things that will concern any working mum. Is she going to be able to pick the children up after school? Is her relationship suffering because of the hours she is working? Is she putting weight on? How can she deal with the seemingly never-ending exhaustion? Manon Bradshaw is a real human being with ordinary everyday concerns and Steiner’s work reminds me of how many of the leading characters, not just in police procedurals, but much of genre fiction, are not.

Remain Silent works as an extremely good crime novel, but it is even better at exploring the pressures that a professional working mum, one who cannot simply walk away from the job because her shift is over, faces on a daily basis. Whether Manon decides to stay in the job or comes to the conclusion that enough is enough is something we will only know if there is a fourth book in the series.

With thanks to Harper Collins UK, Harper Fiction and NetGalley for a review copy.

It took a while to grab my attention , but my recommendation is to stick with it.

DI Manon Bradshaw is an incredible character with hangup and problems but full of wit and wisdom.

The story line brings home how migrant workers can be exploited and their lack of resources.

This is a well written and engrossing thriller/detective novel and well worth reading if this is your genre.

When I accepted this ARC from the publishers I was not aware that Remain Silent is the third book in the DS Manon Bradshaw series. There is clearly a back story that it would have been beneficial to be aware of before embarking on this read. I found it confusing that Manon starts as a DS and about a third of the way through is referred to as a DI. Her bagman is DS Davy Walker and there is humorous banter between them. But is this a police procedural or a kitchen-sink drama, set as it is amongst the Lithuanian slave labour community of Wisbech. Their plight is discussed in great detail for a significant part of the book and Manon's usual part-time environment of cold cases is interrupted when she finds one of these poor souls hanging from a tree when she is out walking her young son. Was this murder or suicide?

Many other reviewers have expanded on the plot, which I found rather turgid, although it is well written. I was stunned to learn that the author is suffering with a brain tumour, which reveals an incredible level of fortitude on her part.

Nevertheless, not the best police procedural I have read.

Thank you to Netgalley for the free copy in exchange for an honest review! Definitely a high three stars, just didn’t wow me enough to earn four. I loved the plot basis for this involving the exploitation of Lithuanian workers and the characters were, for the most part, strong. I enjoyed overall how the narrative panned out and had no issues with red herrings or plot twists. The book, despite being the third in a series, works perfectly fine as a stand-alone to a reader who knows nothing about Manon.

My main gripes come from the diversions to the overarching plot: they seemed unnecessary and irrelevant with no real follow-up, reliant on later sequels to tie the strings. One or two of these is fine but there were so many to keep up with and no real conclusions! There were also some off descriptions here and there I found issue with, personal (least) favourites including a character being attractive on the basis of looking like ‘a malnourished Harry Styles’, as well as another character being attractive despite appearing about twelve years old. These really detracted from my overall experience so while the plot was great, room for improvement!

The setting is Wisbech and the exploitation of a Eastern European men and women in the local agricultural industry. One of these men is found hanged.

That's enough of the story, as the main police detective, DI Manon Bradshaw comes along and we are treated to a superb central character. She is helped along, in no better hands than Ms Steiner, with her black humour and deep characterisation.

Yes, it is a police procedural case with some graphic description of the working conditions and the gang masters. However,the book is more than that, for instance after about 3/4 of the narrative we are treated to Manon's views on her 'specialist subject'' - marriage! That was pure entertainment and yet a further insight into this lovable character.

I cannot believe this could be the last in the series, but in any event I will have the joy of reading her previous books. I am just trying to visualise the actress who could play Manon should the book be 'made for television'' My favourite book of the year in this genre!

Thanks to Net Galley and Harper Collins for the chance to read and review the book..