Lethal Justice

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 of some kind, 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, just before turning up dead.

It’s always bothered Tweedy that he never solved his friend’s death, and that Alistair’s body was found, but not his head.

Tara Grogan responds to a call after a head is found on a spike in Stanley Park.

Soon, headless bodies begin showing up in 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 Charles and Mary Kirkman, a priest and priestess in the church during the time of Alistair Bailey shows up dead, 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.

When Tara learns of the death of Kelly Pritchard, a church member who was a young mother, she sets out to discover what happened to her two small children.

Meanwhile, James is stalking Tara, but it looks like his ticket might be punched before he gets to her.

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.