Rough Justice

Catching the scrotes who shoot other drug dealers in the head in the front seat of their Corvettes in Camden at three in the morning - that’s one thing. When little girls are murdered, and you know who did it - and clever lawyers keep them out of stir - well, that’s something else. And when one of your own, fresh out of the Academy, gets kicked to death in some back alley and a guy who did it grins at you as he gets a Not Guilty verdict form an apathetic jury - well, patience starts to wear thin.

Madeleine Fox is the only woman working on the Area Major Incident Team so she has developed a thick skin. Her boss is a sexist pig, and a good cop. But even he’s showing signs of wear and tear.

Perhaps in a normal year they would all have got through it, just like every year before it. But this is no ordinary year.

Marenko always told her it was not her job to worry about the bigger picture. You did your job and you closed case files, because you can’t change the world and you’ll go crazy trying.

But that’s before the Candy Man; that’s before Michel de Bruin puts one of Marenko’s own family into a permanent vegetative state. Then certain people start to wonder about the laws they are supposed to serve.

And if they ought to lend justice a hand.

Tough, by turns bitterly funny and achingly poignant, ROUGH JUSTICE is the story of a London major crime squad in the year when justice is finally served - outside the courts.