Forget Me Not

I adore Mandasue Heller's books. Probably because I live in Manchester and I know Moss Side/Hulme/Cheetham Hill very well. This tells the story of a prostitute, Pat and her daughter, Lisa. There is a murdererer who is killing prosititutes and leaving a forget me not on them. Lisa meets Benny at the school disco, who she falls head over heels for, but is he all that he seems? And who exactly is the murderer? If you loved these books, then read Martina Cole. Mandasue is the "up north" version of Martina who writes about the London underworld. While, I'm not disputing Mandasue's talent, Martina is definitely the better write. She'll blow you away.

In Manchester's Red Light district, a serial killer is preying on prostitutes. They are brutally killed and with each body is left the killer's calling card- a forget me not flower. Within this backdrop lives Pat Noone who has plied her trade on Westy Lane where the dead girls have worked. Pat has a twelve year old daughter, Lisa, who will be taken away from her if she is convicted one more time of prostitution. Pat, however, cannot break out of the life as she insists on drinking herself into oblivion. She chooses to ignore the inherent danger she is in by continuing her work as a prostitute. Lisa, angry about her mother's insistence on not changing, is an angry teenager. She looks for acceptance, approval and understanding from a friend, Benny- a man much older than herself. Samir Rashid is a businessman from India who is stuck in a sexually repressed marriage. He seeks solace in the arms of Pat Noone. On the trail of the killer is Detective Inspector Seddon who feels the pressure to solve the crime before others die. As the story progresses, all these characters come together for the tense and deadly climax. Mandasue Heller proves with her second exceptional novel that she is not a flash in the pan but an unusually gifted writer. The tension in her books arise not only from the compelling plots but the dead on accurate portrayals of the main protagonists. So many books written today fail to incite excitement or tension in the reader by use of these profound characterizations. They fail in either the plot or they get so into the character that plot and pacing is forgotten. Mandasue Heller manages to hold both of those pieces of the book in place I definitely look forward to her next work and if it is as good as the first two I would state emphatically that she belongs among the best of the genre. Move over Minette Walters and Ruth Rendell.