A pulse-pounding British crime thriller with an astonishing twist.
Detective Bill Roach spent his police career hunting a notorious killer known as Jack the Knife. Now he must re-hone his skills to hunt another equally ruthless killer.
1975
It's the worst thing Detective Bill Roach has ever seen. The young woman's body is found beside a busy road. She's been disembowelled - while she was still alive. Placed on her chest is a cassette player. Inside is a sixty-minute tape, playing just one song over and over again: Mack the Knife.
With his copper's instincts, Bill knows this isn't the last they'll hear of the killer they call Jack the Knife. He's right. The hunt for Jack won't end for almost fifty years.
Present day
Eighty-year-old former police detective Bill Roach sits at the bedside of elderly Gillian Lake, comforting her as she slips away. A popular resident at the Crown Woods Retirement Home, Bill sees it as an act of kindness to ensure his fellow residents don't die alone.
But the post-mortem throws up shocking results. Gillian didn't die of old age. She was murdered.
Bill never caught Jack the Knife. But now he has a chance to make good the past - and catch Gillian's killer.
But Bill's hunt for the truth will expose dangerous secrets. Past secrets that will burst into the present . . . with horrifying results.
Perfect for fans of Lynda la Plante, Rachel McLean, Angela Marsons, Patricia Gibney.

Steve Parker was born and raised in south east London. At age twenty-one, he joined the Metropolitan Police where he served for twenty years in numerous high profile squads before injury forced him out. On leaving the police he took up an enforcement job with a local authority until being made redundant. Once the dust had settled, he decided he'd had enough of enforcement work and decided that early retirement looked good. Thankfully, he was blessed with a complete lack of DIY skills so was legitimately able to get away with swanning around the house doing bugger all, all day long. Finding himself with plenty of spare time and a deep desire to never work for anyone again, he dug out an old screenplay he'd written when he was still a policeman and set himself a challenge to turn it into the book which eventually became his debut novel Their Last Words introducing Detectives Paterson & Clocks. He currently lives in the windier part of East Sussex with his wife and the laziest Cockapoo you've ever seen.