The Wythenshawe Dandy

The Critic Debut Novel of the Month

An unoccupied flat. A freshly dressed bed. The body of a young woman laid out neatly on the duvet. The dead girl looks familiar - troublingly familiar - but Detective Inspector Cassie May can't place her. And to compound her troubles, Cassie has just started dating the flat's owner, James Flynn.

When her boyfriend is accused of murder, an ambitious young DI risks her career - and her life - by defying her bosses, the security services, and a crime syndicate, to prove the innocence of a man who seems more worried about the long-buried secrets she might unearth than the murder charge hanging over him.

Set across the leafiest of Sheffield suburbs, the sink estates of South Manchester, and the bleak and snowy Pennine moors that separate them, The Wythenshawe Dandy presents a discomforting picture of a world where privilege and wretchedness coexist.