Elizabeth George, famed American police procedural novelist of the Inspector Lynley stories once said that “J Wallis Martin is writing the best English suspense novels out there. The Long Close Call gripped me from the first page and held me until the final word” (jacket blurb). Julia Wallis Martin is the author of only four crime novels to-date. All of them different, yet all dealing with the edge of people’s lives.

Julia Wallis Martin has suffered personal loss twice over – her mother was “glad to be out of it” when her daughter was only 17 – and she lost her husband in a car accident when she was 20. Nevertheless, her search for answers led her to research various conditions that later gave her the essential inside knowledge, knowledge that gave weight to exploratory psychological suspense novels. A Likeness in Stone (1997) and The Bird Yard (1998) both received attention and the former was adapted for television. Her books build with menace and suspense. She has been working on her PhD and it hoped that she will return to the ranks of women crime novelists.

Plotline: When Robbie McLaughlan, a Flying Squad officer with London’s Metropolitan Police, shoots and kills a robber during a bank raid, his private and professional life begin to fall apart. The family of the dead man discovers McLaughlan’s identity, and abducts his young son with the intention of luring McLaughlan to his death. But McLaughlan is a man with a secret and, long estranged from his own father, he ultimately has no option but to turn to the man he despises, for only he can possibly help him.

A Long Close Call (2000) sold very well on publication. It had a run of 85 numbered and signed copies and contained an appreciation by one of Britain’s leading writers of psychological suspense,Val McDermid. The featured image is of the deluxe presentation copy.