The Runaway by Lesley Thomson Page B

determination and painstaking approach, I have confidence that Stella will fulfil her ambition. I wish her every luck for her future.

About The Runaway

    An exclusive short story from the bestselling author of The Detective’s Daughter .
    Stella Darnell understands that her mum and dad don’t want to live together anymore. But she wishes she didn’t have to say goodbye to her bedroom, or pack her hateful pink suitcase that bangs against her legs. Her mum says she’ll have special weekends just to see her dad – but Stella knows that when her dad is solving crimes, there’s no time for her.
    And so, aged seven and a half, the detective’s daughter decides to run away…

Reviews
    â€˜Lesley Thomson is a class above.’
    Ian Rankin
    â€˜A wonderful, absorbing, intelligent detective story, The Detective’s Daughter takes you on a journey through time, loss and memory. The characters – particularly Stella – will stay with you for a very long time.’
    Elly Griffiths
    â€˜A thoughtful, well-observed story about families and relationships and what happens to both when a tragedy occurs. It reminded me of Kate Atkinson.’
    Scott Pack
    â€˜This book has a clever mystery plot – but its excellence is in the characters, all credible and memorable, and in its setting in a real West London street, exactly described.’
    Literary Review
    â€˜A gripping, haunting novel about loss and reconciliation, driven by a simple but clever plot.’
    Sunday Times
    â€˜The strength of the writing and the author’s brilliant evocation of how a child’s mind works combine to terrifying effect.
    A novel one cannot forget.’
    Shots
    â€˜Skilfully evokes the era and the slow-moving quality of childhood summers, suggesting the menace lurking just beyond... A study of memory and guilt with several twists.’
    Guardian
    â€˜This emotionally charged thriller grips from the first paragraph, and a nail-biting level of suspense is maintained throughout. A great novel.’
    She Magazine

About The Detective’s Daughter Series
    Stella Darnell must clean. She wipes surfaces, pokes her cloth into the intricate carving of an oak table, whisks a duster over a ceiling rose. She keeps the world in order. Her watch is set three minutes fast for punctuality – a tip she learned from her father – and the couch in her sterile apartment is wrapped in protective plastic, though she never has guests. In her mid-forties, six foot tall, Stella is pleasant but firm, helpful but brutally pragmatic. The detective’s daughter has time for neither frivolities nor fools.
    Jack Harmon is everything Stella deplores. Fanciful and unpredictable, his decisions rely on random signs. He will follow a paper bag blown along a pavement by the wind; a number on a train will dictate his day. Jack is the best cleaner Stella has ever known. Jack sees that Stella makes sense of his intuitive ponderings. Together, as unofficial detectives, these two misfits solve mysteries that have left the police confounded.

    1 – The Detective’s Daughter
    It was the murder that shocked the nation. Thirty years ago Kate Rokesmith went walking by the river with her young son. She never came home.
    For three decades her case file has lain, unsolved, in the corner of an attic. Until Stella Darnell, daughter of Chief Superintendent Darnell, starts to clear out her father’s house after his death…
    The Detective’s Daughter is available here .

    2 – Ghost Girl
    It is a year since her father’s death, but Stella Darnell has not moved on. She visits his house every day and cleans it, leaving it spotless as if he might return.
    Stella’s father was Detective Chief Superintendent at Hammersmith police station, and now she has discovered what looks like an unsolved case in his darkroom: a folder of unlabelled photographs of deserted streets. But why did Terry Darnell – a