Mammoth Screen and Windhover Films will produce the four-part drama in association with ITV Studios.

My takeaways from reading were the now familiar topics of poor parenting and cuts to police numbers and whilst I am intrigued to learn the backstory of the police characters I have no interest in reading more of this series. I found It perfectly understandable as a stand-alone, and the author explains a lot of things from previous books, but I think, to understand Sarah and Lizzie properly, it is better to read the previous books before starting this one. So, to conclude, this is a very realistic and believable novel about teenage criminals and police work, filled with very amusing characters, and twisty plot. Sydney Morning Herald: “A realistic, tense and multi-layered story containing a two-sided moral question, all crowned by a thoughtful and compassionate ending tinged with a little sadness.As head of Operation Perseus – a covert police investigation into a powerful criminal network – Shaw is about to make the arrests of his career. So when a low-level Bluds member is stabbed to death on Gallowstree Lane, Shaw’s priority is to protect his operation. As the conflict continues between the various sections of the force, personalities clash and voices are raised.

Undoubtedly the procedures described are realistic and describe accurately how investigations in the 21st Century are run. We start with a stabbing which turns out fatal and then, as more and more layers of this crime is uncovered, we see that actually, this incident is the very small tip of a very big iceberg with multiple interconnected crimes and perpetrators. It is told from four points of view, Sarah, Lizzie, Kieran and Ryan and far from being distracting it is absorbing, giving the reader different takes on the same incident and a comprehensive overview.

The stabbing death of 15 year old Spencer Cardoso causes ripples far beyond the norm for the death of a low level drug dealer, much of it centred around Ryan Harris, his friend and witness to the killing. Gallowstree Lane is a complex tale and it is one that you definitely need to keep your wits about you when reading.

I know Kate London needs to flesh out her characters, and the issues she raises are very important, but it felt like a bolt-on intrusion, it was more irritating than illuminating and for a while it got in the way of the story quite badly. Shaks is an old family friend as he knew Ryan’s dad before his untimely death and exacted revenge on the person responsible. This is a book about the gangland warfare in London and how young people and drug users are influenced by these thugs who roam the streets, picking out vulnerable folk for their own gratification. The insights and observations that the author provides in the novel smacks of personal experience and knowledge, and it turns out there is good reason for this with the author having a personal history as a serving police officer.I was neither swept up but the urban atmosphere or convinced by Kate London’s need to use “dem”, “dat” and “diss” when recounting from Ryan’s perspective. Kate London’s novel takes this scenario further when a turf war and the stabbing of a teenage boy threatens to escalate and potentially disrupt a secretive two year operation into the Eardsley Bluds and their leader, Shakiel Oliver, who is intent on illegally trafficking guns into the country and onto the streets named Operation Perseus. Kate London’s cast of detectives all share the very human quality of fallibility and mistakes of judgement and oversights are present throughout the story, however arrogance in the case of DI Shaw and the frosty demeanour of DI Collins make it difficult to sympathise with either. A game of cat and mouse with only one conclusion, someone's going to die, and someone's going to have to pay. This area, Gallowstree Lane, is a space that is unwelcoming,with a history of justice being met out with death, and represents an area of London that should be one thing-a park and open space-but has become another, a no go area, a site for gang based violence between the Bluds and the Soldiers where tit for tat revenge becomes deadly for one boy in the right place at the wrong time.