Broken Lines

Where do you go when there is no escape?

Hannah is fleeing her violent husband, after nearly killing him in self-defence from his latest and most brutal attack. She’s now on the run with no I.D., money or phone in an unfamiliar city. Her husband, Peter, is a high-ranking metropolitan police officer. Consumed with rage over what happened, he’ll stop at nothing to find his wife and enact revenge for what she did to him. Calling in every favour and using every resource available to him as a serving officer. Caught in the middle is Detective Inspector Ricky Leonard. Having only recently returned to full duty after his cancer diagnosis and remission, Ricky’s worldview is warped into black-or-white, right or wrong. But this case will throw his coping mechanism into disarray as he realises there is nothing but shades of grey.

Hannah absconds to the city of Manchester. Now lost and alone, she has to make unlikely allies and put her trust in the hands of strangers who have their own dark pasts. All while being hunted by her fixated husband and the police.

D.I. Ricky Leonard is not far behind, as he manages to track Hannah down. However, unbeknownst to him, Peter has friends on the inside who are hindering Ricky’s investigation, so Peter can find his wife before the police locate her. It’s now just a question of who will find her first, and what lengths will Hannah go to escape.

Broken Lines is a mystery thriller and police procedural drama, exposing an insidious truth about domestic abuse in the UK. Written by an officer who witnessed this first-hand.