📖 Book Review ~ After the Storm by G. D. Wright

Avon
1 August 2024

My thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book

Two children went into the sea. Only one came out alive.

Introducing Sergeant Mike Adams and DS Sue Willmott, Beachbrook’s best investigators.

When local couple Andrew and Sophie take their daughter and her friend to the beach on a stormy day, they are momentarily distracted leading both children to get washed out to sea. Andrew dives in, but comes back ashore with only one child – his own daughter, Maria. Joe, the son of his best friend and local police officer, Chris, has drowned. But it was just a tragic accident…wasn’t it?

As Sergeant Mike Adams and DS Sue Willmott investigate what really happened in the water that afternoon, the ripple effects of the tragedy start to tear the community apart. The detectives must discover the truth before their colleague – bereaved and desperate father, Chris – takes the investigation into his own hands…

📖 My Review

Andrew and Sophie take their small daughter, Maria and her friend, Joe to the beach. This is a happy relationship as Joe is a frequent visitor to Andrew and Sophie’s house and they are pleased to look after him whilst his parents Chris and Linda are working as a police officer and paramedic. What should have been an idyllic time at the beach is quickly ruined forever when the children get into difficulties in the sea and Andrew can only save one child. What then follows is a harrowing story about the aftermath of this devastating tragedy and of how it impacts on all those who are involved both on a personal and professional level.

A difficult story, and quite heart wrenching in places, the author has done a good job of recreating the tragedy, describing all the follow up in detail whilst at the same time allowing all the heightened emotions to circulate. Sergeant Mike Adams and DS Sue Willmott are the detectives who have the unenviable task of trying to gather together all the complex pieces of this investigation and with emotions heightened it’s never going to be an easy task. The twists and turns, which keep you guessing, and the fast pace of this heartbreaking story, make it into such a page turner, which lingers long after the book is finished.

About the Author

Gary Wright joined Kent Police at the age of 18 and worked in a variety of uniformed roles. At the age of 29 and completely out of the blue, he suffered two cardiac arrests that led to the diagnosis of a life limiting and incurable disease of the heart. He was unable to continue policing and retired at the age of thirty. He bought a coffee shop in Ramsgate Harbour, and spent years looking out over the sea and dreaming up stories. He now writes full time, committing those very stories to paper.

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