Friday 22 July 2016

Blog Tour ~ Random Acts of Unkindness by Jacqueline Ward



Jaffareadstoo is delighted to host today's stop on the 



Random Acts of Unkindness Blog Tour




 



Random Acts of Unkindness by Jacqueline Ward 



Novelesque
June 2016





A bit of blurb...


How far would you go to find your child? 

DS Jan Pearce has a big problem. Her fifteen year old son, Aiden, is missing. Jan draws together the threads of missing person cases spanning fifty years and finds tragic connections and unsolved questions. 

Bessy Swain, an elderly woman that Jan finds dead on her search for Aiden, and whose own son, Thomas, was also missing, may have the answers. 

Jan uses Bessy's information and her own skills and instinct to track down the missing boys. But is it too late for Aiden? 

Set in the North West of England, with the notorious Saddleworth Moor as a backdrop, Random Acts of Unkindness is a story about motherhood, love and loss and how families of missing people suffer the consequences of major crimes involving their loved ones. 


Random Acts of Unkindness is the first in the DS Jan Pearce series of novels.



My review ...

Saddleworth Moor in North West England is a bleak and lonely place. It's a place that guards its secrets well, and in the quest to find her missing son, DS Jan Pearce discovers, to her cost, just how many evil secrets lurk in dark corners. Looking into missing persons cases, which stretch back over a period of many years, DS Pearce starts to uncover some unusual cases and, as her frantic search for her own missing son gets cast ever wider she starts to discover some painful secrets of her own.

I found the story to be fast paced and intricately plotted. There is much to take in, not just in terms of the present day mystery in which DS Pearce finds herself to be a major part of, but also in the struggle she has to bring to justice those evil manipulators who threaten the very foundation of society.

The story is gritty in the places where it needs to be and remarkably insightful in others, particularly in the way it deals with the sorry history of missing persons. I especially like the way that the author bought time and place to life, and only someone familiar with the subtle nuances of the north of England can do justice to the way in which the dramatic landscape so often shaped people’s destiny.

There is no-one of my generation, growing up in the north of England, who cannot be aware of the ghastly shroud which was cast over those small northern towns, which nestle in the shadow of the moor itself, by the Moors Murderers, and the author has done a really good job of using some of this dark history, whilst at the same time, developing a story which is completely unique.

This is a fascinating and intricately plotted crime novel by an author who, I am sure, will continue to go from strength to strength.


Best Read With...Sausage and Beans on toast, all washed down with copious cups of tea from one of those big brown Betty teapots.





Jacqueline Ward writes short stories, novels and screenplays. She has been writing seriously since 2007 and has had short stories published in anthologies and magazines. Jacqueline won Kindle Scout in 2016 and her crime novel, Random Acts of Unkindness, will be published by Amazon Publishing imprint Kindle Press. Her novel SmartYellowTM was published by Elsewhen Press in 2015 and was nominated for the Arthur C Clarke Award in 2016. Jacqueline is a Chartered psychologist who specializes in narrative psychology, gaining a PhD in narrative and storytelling in 2007. She lives in Oldham, near Manchester, with her partner and their dog.















Find the author on her website
Visit her on Facebook
Follow on Twitter @JacquiAnnC

Read an excerpt from Random Acts of Unkindness here






My thanks to Faye Rogers PR for the invitation to be part of this blog tour 

which runs  18th - 24th July.






For more interesting content do please visit the other stops on the tour.





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