Remain Silent

"I love Susie Steiner’s writing. One of the things that I think distinguishes her books from some of the other police procedurals is it focuses as much on Manon and her home and personal life as it does on the case and the police side. Especially in Remain Silent – there’s a hell of a lot about her and the mess of her life. In this one, her world is actually starting to take shape, she’s got a bloke called Mark and you really get to know her; picking up the book was like coming back to an old friend and remembering everything that I loved about Manon. I like books where you can really get to know the characters and where they feel real. Susie Steiner wrote that character so perfectly. It’s such a wonderful book. That’s always the question with series – and all the books I’ve chosen are series. It’s tricky isn’t it? I would always recommend starting from the beginning because you get to know the characters over the course of the books. But equally, people don’t have all the time in the world and there are always too many brilliant books to read! Generally I think just read what takes your fancy: all these books are written in a way that you can just pick one up and you’re in it. All the cases are unique. Yes, it is. She died quite soon after, so this is the last one she wrote which made it poignant for me. I think knowing that when I was reading it made it unique, in a way."