Summer reads, Sneaky Peeks: Ali Harper's PI novel The Diappeared

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The Disappeared Blurb

A distraught mother…

When Susan Wilkins walks into No Stone Unturned, Leeds’s newest private detective agency, owners Lee and Jo are thrilled. Their first client is the kind of person they always hoped to help—a kind woman desperately worried about her son, Jack.

A missing son…

The case seems simple—kid starts college, takes up with the wrong crowd, forgets to ring his mother. But very quickly, Lee and Jo suspect they’re not being told the whole truth…

A case which could prove deadly…

Their office is ransacked, everyone who knows Jack refuses to talk to them and they feel like they’re being followed...it’s clear Lee and Jo have stumbled into something bigger, and far more dangerous, than they ever expected. Will they find Jack, or will their first case silence them both for good?

Author Biography

Ali Harper writes feminist crime fiction. Her first novel, The Disappeared, will be published by Harper Collins in summer 2018 as part of their Killer Reads series. An option for TV and film rights has also just been signed with Yorkshire-based Duck Soup Films. Ali works as an editor for a prominent literary consultancy and has taught creative writing for a number of years.  She has recently submitted her PhD on Chick Noir. In her spare time she plays netball, badly.

Sneaky Peek

Chapter One

Had I known our first client would be dead less than twenty-six hours after signing the contract, I might not have been so thrilled when she pushed open our office door.

I once read that hindsight is always twenty-twenty, but I disagree. Hindsight distorts the picture, makes us believe we could have done something different, something better. Hindsight opens the door to ‘if only’ and the ‘if only’ is what kills you.

It had been five weeks, four days and six hours since we’d opened for business and in all that time no one had so much as glanced through the window. Despite adverts in every local listings magazine, the only phone calls we’d fielded were cold ones – did we want double-glazing, roof repairs, a conservatory? Jo had been getting increasingly aggressive with each caller. The strain was getting to both of us.

I was alone in the office that Friday afternoon. Jo had nipped out in the company’s battered Vauxhall Combo, ostensibly to buy printer ink – but really, I knew she’d be checking out the latest surveillance equipment at The Spy Shop, down on Kirkstall Road. Jo’s my best mate, business partner, and a gadget freak: not always in that order.

I’d been at my desk when I’d noticed the woman pacing the pavement opposite. I’d watched her through the gaps in our vertical strip blinds. She’d smoked two cigarettes, crushing out the stubs with the heel of her boot. Truth is, I’d been willing her to cross the street and come on in.

So when she did step through the door, my pulse quickened and my mouth went dry. I slid my packet of Golden Virginia into the top drawer.

She was nervous, obviously so. She had blonde hair, cut kind of choppy round her face and she kept touching it, scratching at the back of her neck.

‘Hi,’ I said. I almost fell over the desk in order to shake her hand. She allowed our palms to touch for less than a second, but long enough for me to register the coolness of her skin. ‘Welcome to No Stone Unturned.’