Broken Dreams

By Nick Quantrill

Joe Geraghty, Private Investigator, is used to struggling from one case to the next, barely making the rent on his small office in the Old Town of Hull. Invited by a local businessman to investigate a member of his staff's absenteeism, it's the kind of surveillance work that Geraghty and his small team have performed countless times. When Jennifer Murdoch is found bleeding to death in her bed, Geraghty quickly finds himself trapped in the middle of a police investigation which stretches back to the days when the city had a thriving fishing industry. As the woman's tangled private life begins to unravel, the trail leads Geraghty to local gangster-turned-respectable businessman, Frank Salford, a man with a significant stake in the city's regeneration plans. Still haunted by the death of his wife in a house fire, it seems the people with the answers Geraghty wants are the police and Salford, both of whom want his cooperation for their own ends. With everything at stake, some would go to any length to get what they want—Geraghty included.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Mar 15, 2010
• ISBN: 9780955407031

Nick Quantrill

Nick Quantrill was born and raised in Hull, an isolated industrial city in East Yorkshire. From a young age, Nick has always had a fascination with crime novels, starting young by annoying the local librarians for Famous Five novels. Never realising he could be a writer, Nick spent most of his twenties shouting and bawling his way around the Sunday League football pitches of the city, learning the hard way and meeting an impressive array of characters. With a handful of trophies and permanently damaged ankles to show for his troubles, football was swapped for education, spending the next six years studying of a degree in Social Policy. Approaching now or never time, Nick started writing crime stories set in and around his home city. Instead of just throwing them in a drawer and not letting anyone read them, the stories were made available for free on the Internet, and after winning the HarperCollins ‘Crime Tour’ short story competition in 2006, he started to build a readership. Fast forward a couple of years and after much hard work, a few false starts and countless short stories, Nick completed ‘Broken Dreams.’ Focusing on Hull’s past and future; the novel looks at the death of the city’s fishing industry and explores the problem of how the city can build a new future for itself. ‘Broken Dreams’ also introduces us to Nick’s lead character; rugby league player turned Private Investigator, Joe Geraghty, co-owner of a small detective agency. Nick’s stories are both entertaining and thought provoking, and although the settings may be local to him, the ideas and issues resonate on a much wider basis. When not writing fiction, Nick contributes reviews and essays to a variety of football and music websites. He lives in Hull with his wife, cat and the constant fear Hull City AFC will let him down.

Reviews for Broken Dreams

[johnwbeha · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book and look forward to Nick Quantrill's other books. It is simply a good, fast paced, well plotted thriller, written in a plain, but highly effective style. Not much else to say really!