Playlist for a Paper Angel by Jacqueline Ward

One child found, one child missing – what's the connection?

DS Jan Pearce is still searching for her missing son. When she finds a little girl, Elise, alone in a pram in a busy town centre, she must unravel a mystery that takes her to the edge of her emotions. Then another child, Dara Price, goes missing.

Lisa Connelly, Elise's mother, has been forced into a life of prostitution and has been leaving her little girl alone. Her gangland boss is holding her prisoner but she wants her little girl back.

Jan finds herself balancing her search for her son with finding Dara. Her right hand man, Mike Waring, is on another case so she and her temporary partner, profiler Damien Booth, must solve the puzzle and find Lisa before time runs out for Dara.

Playlist for a Paper Angel is the second in the DS Jan Pearce series of novels and is the sequel to Random Acts of Unkindness.

About The Author

I’m a writer from Manchester in the North West of England.
I’ve been writing all my life and have had articles and short stories published in different magazines and anthologies, but it’s only in the past five years that I have started to write novels.
It’s been a very interesting five years. I’ve learned so much through talking to others, attending book launches, from online forums and by, of course, reading books.
I’m interested in the publishing industry and all its twists and turns, and I’m interested in writers and how they work. But I’m also interested in readers and how they perceive work. My deeper interests lie in how storytellers construct themselves and, given that everyone’s lives are constructed with stories, how people understand the concept of truth.
I had a break from writing novels and studied storytelling from a psychological perspective, and this interest permeates all my work and all my life.  I am fascinated by the interface between the mind and the external world, the inner and the outer, and where writing sits on that interface as meaning making.  In my own writing I hope that I am forming a bridge with the reader that communicates not only words, but the silent messages that punctuate our world and bring vivid images to stories that are about war, crime, its perpetrators and its victims.
How does all this translate into my writing? I arrived at the place I am now, with my completed novels, by really working on communicating how the world is through my characters, how it is for them when they are caught up in the currents between good and bad. I want to tell stories of what these events are, how the mind works, how those who solve problems are really just ordinary people as well as heroes, and how those on the outskirts are often left with the burden of shame and regret.
I also write screenplays. I’ve completed several screewriting courses and I absolutely love writing scripts. I have two in development right now and I have received some very good feedback – this will be a major focus of my 2016 writing life.
Fitting writing into my busy life isn’t easy, but for me it’s essential –  I just have to write. I hope you feel that you just have to read it!


My Review

While I was reading this book I realized that this was the second book in the series, but I didn’t need to read the first one, to enjoy this one, now I need to go back as I can see there is going to be a third.
This book has the unthinkable, and the things that happen are things that we never want to even consider, and yet the author made it so real, that sadly I believe it could be going on.
The story takes place in England, but I had no problem imaging the horror that takes place happening anywhere. A book that once you start with the first page you will be page turning and hoping for the best. The perpetrators of these crimes are the personification of pure Evil, and you will be rooting for them to burn in hell.

I received this book through Net Galley and the Publisher Kindle, and was not required to give a positive review.