The Broken Afternoon, Simon Mason
The Broken Afternoon, Simon Mason
List: $27.99 | Sale: $19.59
Club: $13.99

The Broken Afternoon

Author: Simon Mason

Series: DI Ryan Wilkins Mysteries #2

Narrator: Matt Addis

Unabridged: 9 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: riverrun

Published: 02/02/2023

Synopsis

A DI RYAN WILKINS MYSTERY

A four-year-old girl goes missing in plain sight outside her nursery in Oxford, a middle-class, affluent area, her mother only a stones-throw away.

Ryan Wilkins, one of the youngest ever Detective Inspectors in the Thames Valley force, dishonourably discharged three months ago, watches his former partner DI Ray Wilkins deliver a press conference, confirming a lead.

Ray begins to delve deeper, unearthing an underground network of dark forces in the local area. But will he be able to get closer to the truth of the disappearance? And will Ryan be able to stay away?

This audiobook includes an exclusive preview of the next in the DI Ryan Wilkins Mysteries A Voice in the Night.

(P) 2023 Quercus Editions Ltd

About Simon Mason

SIMON MASON has pursued parallel careers as a publisher and an author, whose YA crime novels Running Girl, Kid Got Shot and Hey, Sherlock! feature the sixteen-year-old slacker genius Garvie Smith. A former Managing Director of David Fickling Books, where he worked with many wonderful writers, including Philip Pullman, he has also taught at Oxford Brookes University and has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Exeter College, Oxford.Lost and Never Found is the third book in the DI Ryan Wilkins Mysteries. The first book, A Killing in November, received widespread critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger. The Second book, The Broken Afternoon, was a Times Audio Book of the Week and a Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ceecee on December 02, 2022

Oxford Crime Book 2 Four year old Poppy Clarke vanishes from outside her Oxford nursery with DI Ray Wilkins leading the investigative. Meanwhile, ex DI Ryan Wilkins is now working as a night security guard and is just as unpredictable as ever. His adorable three year old son also called Ryan, loves t......more

Goodreads review by Shannon M (Canada) on December 16, 2023

THE BROKEN AFTERNOON is the second novel in the DI Wilkins series. I didn’t enjoy this quite as much as the first instalment (“A Killing in November”), and so I waffled between a final 3-star and 4-star rating, ultimately deciding to award it three stars. But, to me, it had a true 3.5 rank. At no p......more

Quotes

Oxford-based author Simon Mason has made a mark with his almost identically named sleuths Ray Wilkins and Ryan Wilkins, the former precise and formal, the latter dishevelled (and now discharged from his job). In The Broken Afternoon, a child goes missing from an Oxford nursery, and the duo must work together again to tackle a clandestine criminal network. Such issues as the vulnerability of children and current diversity drives are grist to Mason's mill in this beguiling offspring of Colin Dexter's Morse series. Financial Times

Move over Morse. Simon Mason's Oxford crime novel confounds all our expectations.

His work has qualities in common with that of fellow Oxford novelist Mick Herron: alert, amusingly cynical, relishing absurdities BookBrunch

The detectives Ryan Wilkins and Ray Wilkins - no relation - are back . . . Having established their relationship so vividly last year in A Killing in November, Simon Mason spreads his wings to show just how good a writer he is. The horror of paedophilia is never downplayed and throws into relief Ryan's unconditional love for his young son: "Be good, Daddy." Oxford and its environs - described so well you can smell the heat-crazed pavements and the rank luxuriance of the water-meadows - is a character in itself . . . The result . . . is a funny, thrilling and life-affirming story. The Times

A welcome return from an unforgettable, nuanced character. Daily Mail

There is no one else like him! Mark Sanderson The Times/Sunday Times Crime Club

Humane, tense, funny and fabulous

The writing is fast and colourful, the men's love-hate relationship is entertaining, and their own troubles add depth to this excellent police procedural. Literary Review

This pacy tale, with twists and raw emotion, is gripping Sun

There is a long history of crime fiction set in Oxford, stretching back to Dorothy L Sayers. Contemporary writers offer a very different view of the city . . . Simon Mason's superb second Oxford-set novel, The Broken Afternoon, opens in a poky office of a van hire company . . . Child abduction is a difficult subject for genre fiction, but Mason handles it sensitively, and every sentence is beautifully written. Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month

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