EXCERPT: Poole Harbour, January 2012
The small cruise launch finally came to rest and dropped anchor. A dark figure waited on the rickety jetty that jutted out across the mudflats. A crewman threw a line across ad the boat was made secure. The figure stepped carefully onto the slippery deck.
'Quick,' he said.
He kept watch on the deck as the two crewmen went below. The younger of them returned almost at once. He led a group of six young women, their faces sickly in the dull light. They shuffled forward one by one across the gangway onto the slimy planking of the jetty. They made their way to the shore where a fourth man was waiting beside an old van. The two crewmen peered into the gloom, but nothing stirred.
The last young woman to reach the shore gasped when she saw the figure waiting at the van.
'Stefan,' she whispered.

ABOUT 'DEADLY CRIMES': A young man’s mutilated body is found on top of the Agglestone, a well-known local landmark on Studland Heath.
It seems that he was involved in a human trafficking and prostitution gang. But why is DCI Sophie Allen keeping something back from her team? Is it linked to the extraordinary discovery of her own father's body at the bottom of a disused mineshaft, more than forty years after he disappeared?

MY THOUGHTS: I have read several of the later books in this series and loved them, so when I came across Deadly Crimes sitting forgotten on my ARC shelf, I loaded it up and off I went.

Now I don't think the writing quality is quite as good as in the later books; some of the dialogue is stilted and unnatural, but I enjoyed the plot and the characters.

DCI Sophie Allen, head of the recently formed Violent Crime Unit in Dorset. An English county which includes a stunning section of the coastline, but whose beauty belies darkness beneath the surface.

DCI Sophie Allen is Dorset’s acknowledged expert on murder and violent crime. She is 42 as the series starts, and lives with her husband and younger daughter in Wareham. Her elder daughter is studying in London. Sophie has a law degree and a master’s in criminal psychology. Her brilliant mind conceals some dark secrets from her past.

DS Barry Marsh is based at Swanage police station. He's quiet, methodical and dedicated, the perfect foil for Sophie's hidden fragility.

These two have a great working partnership despite their very different personalities.

This is an interesting and mostly well-written story encompassing human trafficking and all the other crimes that go along with it: drugs; prostitution; and the cheapness of human life - the very antithesis of Sophie Allen's life where family is all important.

The main characters are definitely likeable, and the villains are villains, except for one or two who do have redeeming characteristics. I do love the denouement where justice is meted out before the legal system gets to one of the criminals.

While this isn't as strong as the later books, it is still interesting and can easily be read as a stand-alone. I'm glad I hadn't read this when I first got it, as I may have passed the rest of the series by and by doing so, missed out on some excellent reads.

⭐⭐⭐.2

#DeadlyCrimes #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: I write crime/mystery stories which are more than simple whodunnits, stories that probe below the surface. I want my readers to feel part of the world that I create in my books, to relate to my characters and to be catalysed into feeling an emotional response to the events that I describe. I’d better explain that I dislike gender stereotypes and the portrayal of women as victims. Be prepared to meet women engineers and scientists, along with men who are receptionists. Victims may be from any gender.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Joffe Books for providing a digital ARC of Deadly Crimes (DCI Sophie Allen #2) by Michael Hambling for review. All opinions in this review are my own personal opinions.

A superb read. I found this interesting and intriguing yet a really easy book to read. This is the 2nd in a series but could be read as a standalone. Although my personal opinion is all series should be read in order.

The best bit of this book for me was the pairing of Sophie and Barry her DC. They do make an excellent duo and can see how they could work very well in more books.
Unfortunately I wasn’t keen on the way the dialogue is written and this spoiled it for me.

Detective Inspector Sophie Allen is head of the Violent Crime Unit in the English County of Dorset. In the second book of the series Sophie faces a tough challenge finding out who murdered the young man whose body was found on top of Agglestone, a local landmark with is tongue cut out. When a young woman is found to have escaped from human traffickers, they are able to tie the death to the ring, but finding them is another matter. We also find out more about Sophie's family when the body of her father is found and she meets her grandparents that she did not know.

This was an interesting and well written story, which I liked better than the first in this series. There are two crimes being investigated that have occurred two decades apart and throughout the story, it becomes apparent that they are linked. With bodies being discovered throughout the area, time is ticking before more young women may be killed. This is a police procedural with a flawed main character. Her past comes to a head in this story. We meet her family in this book and they are a rather staid bunch in my opinion. The villians in this book have great personalities, they are vicious people, yet are loved by others. The police that Sophie works with are all smart, yet sometimes stumble upon clues and information. I loved the interaction between Sophie and Barry, her Detective Sergeant, both are so different yet they seemingly have the perfect working partnership. Once again I listened to this book and I am not sure about this series. I have the next two ready to go on audio, so will go ahead and listen to them and see if this is a series I plan to continue with or not. I enjoyed the audio more this book as I had gotten used to the narrator.

This is a police procedural where we encounter a gang involved in people smuggling – girls from Romania for prostitutes. The usual story, they are promised a better job in the UK. They pay for passage and papers and then find themselves raped and addicted to the heroine that the gang uses on them.
The gang is based in Poole, Dorset, in a very pretty part of the UK coastline. Poole Harbour is a very large natural harbour with many small inlets and lots of wild places along it that are easy to use with a small boat.
DCI Sophie Allen takes on the case when she finds a naked girl – and escapee – as part of another case they had been working on.
She is unusual in that unlike so many fictional fictional female detectives she is not alcoholic, nor is she single. She also not rude but empathetic and helpful to her team. She has a husband and happy family.
But she does have one issue. Her father abandoned her mother before she had even told him she was pregnant – at 16 – and so she was brought up by a single mother, and had always hated her father, until this case and its web of interconnections, shows her she was wrong.
This story shows us that data sorting and combining often provides information that combined with intuition and experience becomes knowledge that can be acted upon. And just how long it can take for that data to be transformed.
The knowledge web that linkages can reveal demonstrates the inter-connectedness of us all – the concept of 7 degrees of separation that is ably shown here as the distance from one person to another can link to yet another and cold cases are solved and old crimes discovered.