A Detective's Dilemma
"Rules? They left those behind a long time ago."
Warning a drug dealer about a police raid isn't a mistake. Not for a detective with sixteen years on the Drug Squad. It's a choice. And Tom Kessler knows exactly what it will cost him.
He has spent his career in the shadows of serious crime: surveillance, undercover work, informant handling. The kind of policing that never reaches the press and leaves marks that don't show. He knows where every line is drawn. He built his life on them.
Then crime boss John Falstead turns on Tom's family, and the system he has served has nothing to offer. No protection. No solution. Just process. So Tom steps outside it.
The man he warns is Pete Johnson: sharp, disciplined, one of Surrey's most successful cocaine dealers. Tom should arrest him. Instead he recruits him. In that single decision an alliance is born that neither man can control, and it runs through encrypted phones, violent enforcers and the constant threat of exposure, all the way to the backstreets of Holyhead and Dublin.
It will cost Tom everything he thought he stood for. And it will take him further than he ever meant to go.
A Detective's Dilemma is a gritty British crime thriller rooted in real police tradecraft: surveillance operations, covert informant handling, and the razor-thin line between the law and the men who break it.
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Peter J Charles
I write British crime and intelligence fiction with a procedural edge. The detail comes from having lived the work rather than researched it.
Before writing came service in the Royal Air Force, then nine years as a detective on the Surrey Drug Squad: surveillance both conventional and electronic, criminal intelligence, informant handling and undercover operations. The characters are complex and the operations are grounded, because I've done the work. The tension is never for show.
The Tom Kessler series now runs to five novels, beginning with A Detective's Dilemma, which introduces Detective Constable Tom Kessler on a Surrey drug squad. The series moves from street-level policing into intelligence and geopolitical territory, and a sixth book is in progress. The first four titles are published in Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian and German.
British thrillers for readers of Stephen Leather and Neil Lancaster.
Whether it's the patience of a long surveillance shift or the urgency of a high-stakes bust, I aim to capture the nuance of the work and the lives behind it.
When I'm not writing, you'll find me walking the countryside, fly fishing, or watching rugby with a pint in my hand. It's a slower pace than the one I used to live, but the stories haven't stopped.
The Tom Kessler Thrillers
The Tom Kessler Thrillers consists of five books and series is set to expand with the upcoming release of one more book. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
