OUT NOW OUT NOW

One murdered picket.
One exposed government.
Six hundred suspects.

All the Dead Men Lie

by Barry N Rainsford

October 1984. After six months the miners’ strike is at its fiercest. Everyday brings yet further hostile confrontation between police and pickets at collieries across the country. In the aftermath of one such incident a picket is found brutally beaten to death.

With 600 hundred suspects, hundreds of them fellow officers, the challenge to Detective Inspector Peter Kalus is difficult enough. That the outcome of the investigation is seen as a political cause for both the supporters of the strike and those who oppose it only adds to the pressure for a rapid solution.

Kalus soon discovers that the victim was much more than a simple miner. He was a man with enemies, any one of whom profited from his death. As the plot unfolds Kalus – a man fighting his own personal and professional demons – is lead further and further into a complex nightmare of political conspiracies, betrayals and murder. It becomes evident that others will also die unless Kalus can unravel the truth of the murdered picket; a truth that if revealed could bring down the Thatcher government and change the face of British politics forever.

A compelling political crime thriller set during the miners' strike of 1984/85, the novel has been described as 'a complex and gritty piece of work' with a plot that ’weaves together into a seamless whole'. The modern noir styling of the novel creates 'a bleakness... the plot develops with a real unsettling menace.'

Crossing the fields, the growing light revealed the remains of the earlier pitched battle between police and pickets; bricks, stones, torn clothing, a police helmet or two, along with broken placards and the wooden staves that had held them. The police line had once more succeeded in pushing the pickets back from the entrance, the coaches carrying the working miners racing through awith the morning shift.

Excerpt from All the Dead Men Lie

It took for Clarke to stand almost directly above the recumbent figure before he realised that the man’s head was covered in blood, as was the grass around it. Across the back and centre of the skull was what appeared to be a large gash where something round and heavy, something like a baseball bat or a baton, had made terrible impact.

Excerpt from All the Dead Men Lie

None of them looked his way. Not a head turned towards him. No eyes met his own. He knew what they were thinking: Why are you back so soon? Why are you in charge? Handsworth. What really happened? What makes you so special? Nothing. People were dead because of him. He couldn’t change that.

Excerpt from All the Dead Men Lie

Mallen let out a short plosive snort of derision. ‘How do we go about identifying who was where or what they saw amongst this lot? Chaos. Three hundred or more officers, as well as what...? More than four hundred miners and pickets? All of them likely within a hundred yards of a killing - a man beaten to death - and not one of them saw a bloody thing!’

Excerpt from All the Dead Men Lie

A permanent slight curl of his top lip was the memento of a football game that had turned into a war, one leaving him with a severed facial nerve and the legacy of a lip rolling permanently upwards. In a teenage boy it looked cool - Marlon Brando The Wild Ones cool. In a man approaching middle age it gave an air of discontent, a seemingly continual dissatisfaction of all he met.

Excerpt from All the Dead Men Lie

The book proceeds at a cracking pace with a tight narrative and strong characterization; I kept turning the pages to the very end – a satisfying end that brought all the threads together with a realistic and believable solution.