#BlogTour-‘Lost Lives’ by Lisa Cutts

I was absolutely thrilled to be asked to contribute towards the blog tour for ‘Lost Lives’ by Lisa Cutts

‘Lost Lives’ is available now  in eBook format and paperback.

My utmost thanks to Becky McCarthy of Simon and Schuster for having me on board the blogtour with some wonderful bookbloggers, and Lisa for being so passionate about the subjects she covers in  her books.

Book description

When Anna arrives in the UK, she believes it’s the start of a better life for her and her daughter. But what awaits her is more shocking than anything she could have ever imagined. DI Harry Powell is investigating a shooting, but the victim has been scared into silence. As Harry struggles to piece together what little information he has, he stumbles upon an operation that may put countless lives across the country at risk.

As Anna’s situation grows more dangerous by the day, Harry is forced to push his overstretched team to the limits to find answers. But for one of them, will it already be too late?

Anna and her family have paid money they can ill afford to send her to the UK in the hopes of building a better life. Eventually, she will be able to bring her daughter to live with her but at the start of the book, Anna is setting out full of hope and trepidation.

She quickly realises that it is not going to be easy and a series of incidents reveal to her that she is trapped. Anna and her fellow trafficked immigrants have been tricked, swindled, exploited and all in plain sight. They are being hidden in the middle of an ordinary neighbourhood and bussed to a farm every day to pack vegetables ,wrestle chickens or work in a carwash. There are alternatives to this ,but they are much , much worse…

DI Harry Powell’s story runs parallel to Anna’s as he investigates a shooting at a shared household. One of the residents is a fellow police officer, another is a hidden sex offender and a third is a police informant living under cover. They are reasonably sure that the shooting was meant to scare, injure or kill one of them, but which one?

The two stories quickly become intertwined as the person who was shot at has links to human trafficking and it becomes a race against time to rescue these people before they are moved on as well as bringing the entire organisation down.

‘Lost Lives’ is a powerful story with the authenticity that only being written by a detective can bring. From the banter in the police room, to the callouts over the radios, the legal aspects of arrests and the forming of task forces, Lisa takes us straight to the heart of modern policing.

Short staffed, underfunded but never less than 100% engaged, this is a story that has a horrible ring of truth to it as how many people are daily being trafficked into the UK with dreams of a better life only to find themselves a modern slave, a sex worker or exploited for manual labour until they drop dead?

She provides a quiet dignity to the victims in giving enough information so that you understand the physical and mental side effects of those vulnerable to exploitation, but not so much that it is gory. You are rooting for Harry every step of the way as things become increasingly tense and life threatening for Anna and her friend Lili.

The value of a human life is laid bare, as are the lengths people will go to to exploit that vulnerability-the worst part for me was when Anna was walking through the streets to meet the minibus which took her to the farm and her frantically remembering her ‘script’ in case anyone asked her where she was from. She and her fellow workers were completely invisible . It really made you think about the people you walk past daily , where they were from and what their journey was.

‘Lost Lives’ is a powerful and impassioned book that I am extremely grateful to have read. My thanks, once more, to Lisa, Becky and Simon and Schuster for the opportunity to be part of this blog tour.

About the Author

Lisa Cutts is the author of four police procedural novels, based on her twenty-one years of policing experience. She works as a detective constable for Kent Police and has spent over ten years in the Serious Crime Directorate dealing mostly with murders and other serious investigations. She has been on BBC Radio 4’s Open Book with Mariella Frostrup, part of First Fictions festival at West Dean college, Chichester, on the inaugural panel at Brighton’s Dark and Stormy festival, on ITV’s This Morning and at the Chiswick Book Festival. Her debut novel, Never Forget, won the 2014 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for best thriller.

Links-https://www.lisacutts.co.uk/

Twitter-https://twitter.com/LisaCuttsAuthor

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