Justice for the Damned: A Steel City Thriller

By Ben Cheetham

A Sheffield prostitute has disappeared. With no family to fight for her, she's just the latest in a long line of missing girls stretching back three decades. Nobody cares about their names. Nobody remembers their faces. They are the unloved, the damaged, the forgotten, the damned. Among the women working South Yorkshire's streets, rumors of a serial killer have long circulated. But the police's top brass don't want to know about it. Talk of serial killers panics the public and embarrasses the department. But two very different detectives, each driven by their own dangerous obsessions, are being drawn into a murky world of perversion, murder and corruption that stretches from the streets to the corridors of power.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Apr 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781784970413

Ben Cheetham

Ben Cheetham is an award-winning writer and Pushcart Prize nominee. His writing spans genres, but he has a passion for dark, gritty crime fiction. He lives in Sheffield, UK, where—when he's not chasing around after his son—he spends most of his time locked away in his study racking his brain for the next paragraph, the next sentence, the next word. For more information, visit BenCheetham.com.

Reviews for Justice for the Damned

[cissa_5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoy the medieval atmosphere of this series. I am sure that there are attitudes and details that are anachronistic, though I'm not an expert- but Royal does a good job of keeping the characters and most of their emotions plausible for their era.Plus- nice tricky murder mysteries!In this one there is a murdering possible ghost, plus various other schemes and undercurrents which tie in to the murders to some degree. I do think the favoring of a marriage based on love was anachronistic, but then I am not an expert! Certainly the opposition and the alternatives to such seemed realistic.Both Eleanor and Thomas are well-drawn protagonists, and the secondary characters also spring to life.It's a dense plot, but handled well, even though initially I had a hard time keeping track of the relationships among the villagers.This is the second in the series, but I think one could easily start here.