The first in Cumbrian crime best-seller J J Salkeld's new series of humorous and gritty Kindle-friendly novellas. Set in Carlisle - on the border between England and Scotland and much else besides - Call & Response introduces DS Samantha 'Pepper' Wilson and her North Division CID team. In this first episode Pepper struggles to cope with the madness and sadness of everyday policing, whist covering for an absent boss and adapting to a new Superintendent who's come straight from a supermarket's supply chain to British policing's chain of command. And matters take a serious turn when a case of 'revenge porn' is reported, involving members of a minority ethnic group, and one of Pepper's young DCs is assaulted, within spitting distance of Carlisle's shiny new Police HQ. Both cases are delicate and potentially inflammatory, and Pepper's short fuse is trimmed still more by the return to Carlisle of a dangerous career criminal with whom Pepper grew up, and whose reappearance could have dangerous implications for her, the city, and its now almost vanishingly 'thin blue line'.

In the second instalment of the Border City Blues novella series DS Samantha 'Pepper' Wilson faces challenges on all fronts. Her assertive policing style lands her in trouble again, but that's the least of her worries. Because Dai Young, a crime boss with boundless ambition and absolutely no boundaries, is dead set on removing his local competition, and fully intends to use the police to help him achieve his objectives. So when DC Rex Copeland is contacted by an underworld figure with some potentially career-defining intelligence he is cautious, and not only because he has already learned that informants invariably face in two directions. But, if the information is correct, then Pepper and her team have a golden opportunity to both arrest a dangerous escaped prisoner and undermine Dai Young's whole operation in Carlisle and beyond. It's just too good an opportunity to pass up, isn't it?

In episode 3 of J J Salkeld's epic Border City Blues novella series DS Samantha 'Pepper' Wilson continues to confront Dai Young, the newly crowned criminal kingpin. Her senior colleagues still seem oblivious, of this and much else besides, but at last an unconventional ally has arrived on the field of battle - a latter-day Robin Hood who seems intent on stealing only from Young, and on giving only to the deserving. And there's still the whiff of police corruption in the air, as operation after operation is blown. Could it really be that, after a century and a half of clear superiority, the savage cuts to police budgets and capabilities are finally swinging the balance of power away from the police, and towards the dark and violent forces of organised crime? J J Salkeld is an established crime and thriller writer, whose international best-selling Lakeland Murders series is also available on Kindle. Reviewer R Rhodes said: 'Salkeld is good. Not just as a writer of gripping detective stories; but even more for his feisty exposure of the lunacies of institutions, hierarchies, and power. A refreshing and enlightening anarchist - much needed in these jaded, compliant and consumptive times.'