"The contrasting viewpoints create a plot that is fast, forceful, and absorbing" - Vile City review from Dot Marshall-Gent

A new review for Vile City on Promoting Crime

"the writer creates two intriguing characters who often defy readers’ expectations."

Thursday, 15 September 2022

‘Detective in a Coma: Vile City’ by Jennifer Lee Thomson

Published by Diamond Books Ltd,
24 November 2021.
ISBN: 978-1-83840268-6 (PB)

When Detective Sergeant Stevie Campbell is assaulted on duty, he cheats death, but only just, and whilst he languishes in hospital, DS Brian McKeith has taken his place on Detective Inspector Waddell’s team.  McKeith has yet to impress his new boss who is wading through the in-tray from Hell that includes a spate of robberies as well as two missing women. To make matters worse, the new DS has just informed Waddell that another woman has disappeared.  This time, however, there is a witness.  Shelley’s boyfriend was also attacked, and the detectives are hoping that he might be able to give them a lead.

The third person narrative moves primarily between the perspectives of Waddell and Shelley, though other points of view are also related.  This juxtaposition creates an almost cinematographic feel to the story as it flips from the police investigation to the description of the imprisoned woman.  Waddell’s team must first determine whether there is a link between the women who have disappeared. Shelley on the other hand does not wait for the cavalry to arrive and makes a series of valiant attempts to escape her captives.  By foregrounding these two points of view, the writer creates two intriguing characters who often defy readers’ expectations.

The contrasting viewpoints create a plot that is fast, forceful, and absorbing. There are several scenes of brutality and some graphic depictions of sex trafficking, that are hard to read.  Crucially, though, the writer has provided female characters who are combative and resourceful.  There are also moments of poignancy.  For example, when Waddell visits Stevie in hospital he is clearly traumatised to see his erstwhile partner’s condition; sometimes he believes he is conversing with his old pal, and this causes him to doubt his sanity.  Similarly, Shelley’s valiant attempts to escape provoke empathy as well as admiration.

Detective in a Coma: Vile City is a tough Scottish thriller that explores the appalling trade in human beings.  It also examines how resilience and determination can carry us through the worst of times.  If gritty crime is your thing, you’ll enjoy this book.  I did, particularly the deliciously, dark twist at the end.
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Reviewer: Dot Marshall-Gent

Jennifer Lee Thomson is an award-winning crime writer who has been scribbling away all her life. She also writes as Jenny Thomson and is an animal and human rights advocate.

Dot Marshall-Gent worked in the emergency services for twenty years first as a police officer, then as a paramedic and finally as a fire control officer before graduating from King’s College, London as a teacher of English in her mid-forties.  She completed a M.A. in Special and Inclusive Education at the Institute of Education, London and now teaches part-time and writes mainly about educational issues.  Dot sings jazz and country music and plays guitar, banjo and piano as well as being addicted to reading mystery and crime fiction.  

Thanks to Mystery People and Dot Marshall-Gent. You can check out the Mystery People website here

What happens after abducted Shelley Craig wakes up in Vile City?

What happens after Shelley Craig wakes up in Vile City after she's been abducted and her boyfriend left for dead? 

Here's an extract -

When Shelley came to, her throat was raw. Water. She needed water. With one hand, she groped for the glass she always kept on the bedside table.

Damn, it wasn’t there. Must have moved it.

She pulled herself into a sitting position. When she moved her head it was as though a part had broken off inside. She flopped back down. What had she done last night to get into this state? She hadn’t changed out of her work clothes; she was wearing her work trousers that pinched at her calves because Stuart hadn’t noticed the ‘dry clean only’ label and they’d shrunk in the wash.

Trying to dredge up the last thing she remembered made her head hurt. Her disorientation wasn’t helped by being unable to see properly because her eyes were stuck together by the glue of sleep. She must have forgotten to take her contact lenses out.

Wherever she was, it wasn’t at home. She was lying too low down and the place smelt of unwashed laundry and mould.

Maybe she was sleeping on some pal’s floor after one cocktail too many. That had to be it. Think, damn it, think.

When some light permeated the darkness, the jolt it gave her was a bolt of electricity to her brain.

Stuart. He’d been attacked. Was he okay?

A sob wracked her body as she forced herself to sit up. This wasn’t the time to get hysterical. She could do that later when she was safely at home.

She rubbed her eyes with her fingers, picking away the sleep until she could see clearly. 

She was on a bare mattress on top of a rusty old bed frame, in a strange room with torn wallpaper and flaking paint on the wall. The bed creaked whenever she moved and she wanted to tell it to shut the hell up. She didn’t want him to hear.

She remembered his voice in her ear, saying he’d kill Stuart unless she cooperated. Had he hurt him? That thought made her sob.

He’d know she was awake and then what would he do – rape her? She didn’t think he’d done it already. 

Surely, she’d be able to tell, wouldn’t she?

***TO BE CONTINUED***

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Vile City is available now 

Amazon UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/Detective-Coma-Jennifer-Lee-Thomson-ebook/dp/B09M3YNLL2

Amazon .com https://www.amazon.com/Detective-Coma-Jennifer-Lee-Thomson-ebook/dp/B09M3YNLL2

Amazon Canada https://www.amazon.can/Detective-Coma-Jennifer-Lee-Thomson-ebook/dp/B09M3YNLL2

Amazon Australia https://www.amazon.com.au/Detective-Coma-Jennifer-Lee-Thomson-ebook/dp/B09M3YNLL2

Making a Murderer - the Night Stalker

Are some people born evil?

The question is often asked whether the monsters who commit evil crimes are the product of nature, i.e they were born that way and nothing could have prevented their evil course, or nurture, i.e their life experiences shaped them into who they were. 

In the case of Richard Ramirez otherwise known as the Night Stalker, the subject of a gripping Netflix documentary outlining how he was caught, it would appear at first that he was born evil incarnate. 

Those who were raped, bludgeoned and stabbed and throttled by one of the most notorious serial killers to have ever scorched this earth, would probably say he was the devil. That the devil came to their homes. 

But on watching the Netflix documentary there were a few throwaway facts about Ramirez that were never fully explored, possibly because no one wanted to make any excuses for such a unapologetically sick killer. 

These facts that would point to Ramirez being the result of nurture, or in his case the lack of any decency in those who should have taken care of him.

Fact 1 - When Ramirez was just 12 years-old, his cousin Miguel (known as Mike) would show him pictures of war crimes he says he committed whilst in the US army. Those pictures are said to have included ones of a dead Vietnamese woman he raped. She'd been decapitated.

Could that be the source of Richard Ramirez's sick compulsion to rape and brutalise not just women but children? 

Could being shown such vile images at a young and impressionable age have led Ramirez to think that sex and violence were intrinsically linked snd resulted in him recreating the kind of brutality and inhumanity his uncle had shown his alleged victims? 

Fact 2 - The very same vile cousin Mike shot his wife in the face and killed her in front of the young Ramirez. 

Again, we have someone young and impressionable seeing someone he looked up to commit cold-blooded murder. A man who would smoke cannabis with the boy. 

Is there a possibility that had he not been shown any photographs or seen his cousin murder his wife, he wouldn't have gone on on to become one of them worst human beings to have ever lived? 

The answers is we will never really know. 

Lessons on breaking into homes 

Fact 3 - After his cousin killed his wife, Ramirez was sent to live with his sister and her husband. Her husband was a peeping tom and used to take Ramirez with him as he peeped on women. 

Is that how the man also known as the Walk-in Killer was able to sneak into his victims homes? Had he not been shown how to creep about undetected by his brother-in-law would he have been able to sneak up on his victims?

The making of a serial killer

If there was ever a set of circumstances that created a serial killer Ramirez's would be almost textbook. And that's before we even looked at his childhood brought up in a home with a violent father.

Whether Ramirez was made and not born a despicable human being, his being dead makes the city he held in the grips of fear, Los Angeles a much safer place.