Every family has its secrets... Annabelle Lake thought she recognised the Ford Fiesta waiting outside her school, and the driver in it. She was wrong. Her body is discovered some time later, dangling from a swing in a local playground on Canvey Island. The post-mortem shows she’s been fed, clothed and kept warm. That whoever was responsible had looked after her. But when another girl goes missing and is found in a similar fashion, that’s where the similarities end. Both girls have never met and they’re from completely different backgrounds. So what connects them? DS Tomek Bowen and the team at Essex Police must find out before it’s too late. And on an island that’s below sea level, it’s only a matter of time until the truth comes flooding out. Death’s Grip is the unforgettable second book in the DS Tomek Bowen Essex Murder Mystery series by Jack Probyn. Filled with twists, peppered with romance and flavoured with ounces of dark humour, this fast-paced British detective novel will keep you guessing until the very end when the final shocking twist is revealed. Perfect for fans of JD Kirk, JM Dalgliesh, TG Reid, Simon McCleave and Rachel Mclean. ___________________________________________________________________________________ THE SETTING Canvey Island, with its low-lying marshes and silent, brackish waters, feels like a place cut off from the rest of Essex. The island’s isolation, surrounded by the dark, slow-moving waters of the Thames, gives it an unsettling stillness. Sea defenses and forgotten corners of the shoreline hint at a past riddled with floods and unspoken tragedies. Here, as the fog and rain rolls in, the island takes on a haunting air, as if the land itself remembers things best left buried beneath its soggy surface. ___________________________________________________________________________________ MEET THE DETECTIVE Now on the wrong side of forty, DS Tomek Bowen has begun to worry more about the little things. Like the food he puts in his body, how many pints he can have without feeling too hungover, and what beard dye to use for his increasingly greying hair. But now he has something more important to worry about: a thirteen-year-old daughter he knew nothing about until recently. Now he's a father, life and all its delicate intricacies have become infinitely more difficult and troublesome. On an island at constant risk of flooding, will he sink or swim?