Book description
A woman is discovered beneath the London streets, barely alive.
Soon after, DC Josie Chancellor finds an abandoned, newborn baby close
to Leadengate station. DI Will Wagstaffe puts woman and baby together.
The woman is Kerry Degg, a burlesque singer, as well as a rotten wife
and mother. Kerry has bad friends, a dodgy husband and no idea about
what it takes to build a family. As Kerry clings to life, Staffe hears
only discord: from a well- connected West London gangster and a
forgotten politician; from a maligned sister and an unborn population
to whom someone, somewhere, is determined to give voice. Staffe
ventures from Whitehall's clubland to Soho's fleshpots trying to make
his way through a labyrinth of trails that leads above and below
ground to another woman, seemingly forced - like Kerry Degg - to bear
her child in captivity. In Pain of Death, DI Will Wagstaffe discovers
that the simplest thing in all the world - to bear a child - lies
beneath the actions of the powerful and the desperate. And will he
manage to rescue both mother and child in time?
Adam Creed was born in Salford and read PPE at Balliol College
Oxford before working for Flemings in the City. He abandoned his
career to study writing at Sheffield Hallam University, following
which he wrote in Andalucia then returned to England to work with
writers in prison. He was Project Leader of Free To Write and is now
Head of Writing at Liverpool John Moores University. He has a wife and
two beautiful daughters. His first novel was Suffer the Children.
