Project Description

Aimed at the seasoned crime reader, “Hidden in Plain Sight” takes the Sarah Hillary style police procedural to a thrilling “Lisbeth Salander” level.  An undercover agent, foreign powers, and confused identities, shed light on the shadowy criminal world that we see every day but, frighteningly, never notice.

Vicky Lee is a modern police officer for the 2020’s.  She values the laws she defends and is nothing like the jaded maverick we have become used to in this genre.  However, Vicky is trapped.  At home, her parents try to control her, even though she is 26. At work, she ticks plenty boxes (gender and ethnic diversity in particular) but people don’t seem to see her at all.  Until, that is, she starts to unravel a complex human trafficking ring operating in rural North East Scotland. The reader watches as Vicky puts together the puzzle of how the police and others are implicated in criminality while gaining control over her own life, creating her own identity, and asserting her individuality.

As a parallel story, we follow Magda as she is trafficked from Bosnia into the UK and the story of the trafficker, Goran, from a child victim in war-torn Sarajevo to butcher for the crime boss, Malcom Kincaid.  Vicky finds informants and forms alliances as the body count increases and the evidence points to someone with a cast iron alibi as the killer.

“Hidden in Plain Sight”, now renamed as Crossing the Line, reminds us that not all crime takes place in the dark and the dingy. It is a book about identity and belonging and is set against a backdrop of a second Scottish Independence referendum, which makes us all question where we belong.