Just 15 years old … brutalised … dumped in a park … throat slashed. Schoolgirl prostitute Michelle Lucas died in agony and terror. The sight breaks the heart of DS Bev Morriss of West Midlands Police and a cold fury consumes her.
Plunging herself into the seedy heart of Birmingham’s vice-land she struggles to infiltrate the deadly jungle of hookers, evil pimps and violent johns. But no one will break the wall of silence
When a second victim dies Bev has to take the most dangerous gamble of her life - out on the streets. Maureen Carter: Former BBC Newsnight presenter Maureen has worked extensively in newspapers, radio and television. She still freelances in the business, when she's not busy novel writing. As a journalist she’s worked closely with the police, covering countless crime stories, including several murders. She’s also interviewed victims and seen villains sent down.
Maureen was inspired to write Working Girls by a police pilot scheme to treat younger prostitutes as victims rather than criminals.
'It set me thinking about women on the game,' she says. 'What made a girl risk her health, and her life, night after night? What, if any, choice did she have? I wondered: could I combine appealing characters from this largely ignored section of society with a measure of social comment and produce an engaging and entertaining crime novel?'

Dead and dumped. Jon was nobody ... no money ... no influence. So WHO dropped him in the river?
Bodies are bad for business, so when one is dredged up in the Midway port developers want it buried. Deep. But Humility found the body and she's not going to let it go. Not until she knows who killed the guy everyone said was harmless.
She’s a low-tech woman in a hi-tech world and no one wants to give her any answers. But with her best friend's job on the line, a series of 'accidents' at the Port and the battered barge she lives on threatened with seizure, she's not going to give up.
The mystery leads her to the cruellest parts of the city where people kill for the cost of a meal and it's dangerous to get involved. When she has to seek help from the local crime boss, she knows his price is likely to be high.
It’s a world where she's not sure anyone is who they claim to be and where one death leads to another. And the next could be hers.

Penny Deacon: Former sailing instructor Penny decided to put her years afloat to good use - giving her first crime novel a maritime theme.
"After I left university I spent ten years living on a yacht and I've had enough drama at sea to know just how dangerous it can be," she says. "It was always in my mind to use my knowledge of sailing to make a truly authentic and nerve-jangling maritime thriller."
Penny believes that though A Kind of Puritan is set a few years in the future all sailing enthusiasts will recognise the characters involved!
She says it was natural to set Puritan on the South Coast because that's where her sailing started and where she got “up close and personal with Solent mud!”; but she's not revealing exactly where her fictional port of Midway is.
"Midway has its roots in a real place, but I've still got friends who live there and want to keep them!"