Conville & Walsh

In the heat of London’s summer, sexual predators are allowed to roam free and children are attacked. However, someone has decided to take matters into their own hands and a known paedophile is horrifically murdered. The next day, another is brutally tortured and left to live.

DI Will Wagstaffe – ‘Staffe’ to friends and enemies alike - finds himself having to protect known offenders and haul the families of their victims down to the precinct. As he digs deep into London’s dirtiest seams, figures from Staffe’s past come back to haunt him: Sylvie, the estranged love of his life, and Jessop, his ex-partner and mentor. In pursuing justice, he has to hurt the ones he loves.

Staffe lives in a splendid Georgian flat in South Kensington – one of a portfolio of flats and houses he acquired following the murder of his parents. He collects antique furniture and likes to cook, drink fine wine and listen to classical music and jazz. A reluctant bachelor, strong women tug at him from each quarter of his life.

In SUFFER THE CHILDREN, a vigilante killer lures Staffe closer and closer into his web; allowing himself to get too personally involved, he jeopardises his position among his colleagues. To crack the case before it is taken off him, he takes further risks and finds himself drawn to a vigilante case that Jessop prosecuted years ago. Is this case telling him something?

The victims are paedophiles who escaped conviction when their cases were dropped by the CPS. Could it be that the families of the child abuse victims are in cahoots together to enact their own retribution? What would you do if your child was raped and someone offered the mother of all vengeances?