This was a down to earth and totally absorbing story. It handled a difficult subject very well with realistic characters and human frailties. The conclusion tumbled down very rapidly and although confusing in parts, was very satisfying.

The Broken Afternoon sees the return of the DI Wilkins in what is an enjoyable follow up to the first book in the series.

With Ryan Wilkins having been dismissed from the police force at the end of book one DI Ray Wilkins is faced with his most challenging case yet as a young girl disappears from outside her nursery one afternoon

The story is well written and kept me entertained throughout and this is becoming a series I look forward to reading.

One that is definitely recommended.

Having really enjoyed, ‘A Killing in November,’ I was thrilled to read this second outing for D.I. Raymond Wilkins and his namesake, Ryan Earl Wilkins. However, the two men could not be more different. Raymond Wilkins is from a wealthy, ambitious and high-achieving background. His father is a presence in his life, although there is definite tension when he calls Raymond to keep his eye on his career. After problems conceiving, Raymond’s wife is pregnant with twins, but he is conflicted in this book. Torn between the needs of his wife and his career, between fatherhood and those carefree bachelorhood days. Meanwhile, Ryan Wilkins has a background of poverty and abuse. His father, a violent alcoholic, now in prison. Ryan himself, single father to a young son, working as a security guard after being thrown out of the police after the first book.

This novel combines so much within its pages. Centrally, there is the disappearance of four-year-old Poppy Clarke, outside Magpies nursery in leafy Oxford. A mother distracted; a young girl snatched. D.I. Raymond Wilkins in charge of the kind of case which sends the media into overdrive. Meanwhile, the wonderfully named, Mick Dick, a previous schoolfriends of Ryan, is discovered by him on his security rounds. The security guard lets him go and a terrified Mick is later found dead, apparently the victim of a hit and run. However, Ryan, twitchy, intelligent, damaged and dedicated, is unable to let his death go. This is intelligent crime writing, involving uncomfortable subjects with realism and understanding. Often those in charge are unsure and have people looking over their shoulder. This is Oxford, town and gown, with wealth and poverty side by side and with Ryan, the outsider, attempting to make his way back into the police force. A great series, I look forward to reading on. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

When four year old Poppy Clarke goes missing it falls to DI Ray Wilkins to solve the case.
Under the watchful eye of his boss Detective Superintendent Wallace, Ray explores every avenue to try and find the missing girl but all he seems to find is dead ends. With his heavily pregnant wife Diane needing him at home and the case needing him at work he feels he is being pulled in two but he needs all his focus on finding Poppy.
Meanwhile ex-DI Ryan Wilkins is working as a security guard at a van hire company. Struggling since his dishonourable discharge from the force, Ryan watches as his former partner, Ray, begins to crumble under the pressure. Ryan may be able to help Ray, but what will he risk in order to do this and could his interference make matters worse.
This book gripped me from the start, it was tense with many twists and turns. I hope there is another to come soon.

This 2nd Oxford set crime thriller featuring the 2 DI Wilkins Is another superb read.

This story follows DI Ray Wilkins, and now suspended Ryan Wilkins in the hunt for missing Poppy, a 4 year old girl taken from her expensive upper class Nursery.

This thriller quickly gets quite dark and gritty, both with the plot and the personal lives of the 2 protagonists.

The way Simon Mason draws a picture of affluent Oxford, being muddied by this heinous crime is really quite brilliant. As is the unique and addictive style of writing.

I loved the first book, I hoped there would be more, my wish was granted and Simon Mason delivered. A series that is going to blossom into something bigger. It’s fine crime writing and even this early in the year I wander if I’ll read much better in 2023, I imagine not.

Excellent.

Historic Oxford, on a sunny warm afternoon, a day when the lives of Poppy Clarke's parents will never be the same again, because their sweet, loveable little Poppy, dressed up as a pirate with ribbons in her hair, waiting for her mother, suddenly disappears.
A manhunt soon ensues, and when Poppy is finally found, the anger and the outrage in the country and the media is felt everywhere.

This high-octane and razor-sharp thriller features two protagonists: handsome, Oxford educated DI Ray(mond) Winkler, and anti-hero, 27 year-old ‘park trash’ Ryan Earl Wikins, with no formal education, and dishonorably discharged from the Thames Valley Police due to ‘lack of poor behaviour with an attitude far below acceptable.’ The two share ‘a fellowship of mutual irritation, or something else, sharp…, something passed between them, some shared pulse.’[red.]

The author uses the storylines of two different, seemingly unlinked cases, which at times overlap, yet only come together at the end.
Ryan's childhood friend, 'Mick Dick' arrives late at night at the compound where Ryan works, completely upset and anxious, looking for help, he appears terrified. Later, Ryan learns that he died the next morning in a hit and run. DI Ray, is looking into the disappearance of Poppy Clark, while struggling with his home situation: his wife is expecting twins: she is irritable and cross, she blames him alone for her condition, and he is urged to sleep in the spare room. They are no longer on speaking terms, and despite the seriousness of their relationship problems, I found this part written with a lot of humour.

Because Poppy's parents went through a nasty divorce, in which the father received a restraining order, the father was initially suspected of depriving the child of parental authority.
Ray concentrates mainly on finding Poppy, while Ryan, who has been suspended, is mainly concerned with what may have happened to his schoolmate. Why was he so scared? And why was he sleeping in rented vans?

The story is told at a fast pace, with short chapters, a staccato writing style, with lots of slang, irony, and informal language use.
A very descriptive, gripping writing style, full of anger and emotion. without ever getting boring anywhere, with great attention to detail, and well-developed, likable two main characters.

I did find the scenes between Ray and his wife quite humorous, and how Ryan interacted with his infant son endearing. Despite the fact that sometimes life doesn't always go as expected, these two manage to make the best of it. Ryan in particular is a star in this. This humour brought balance to the yet heavy theme of the book.

Halfway through the book the story gains momentum, and it's like being on a rollercoaster, one clue after another follows, and as a reader you are regularly caught off guard, and when you think the culprit has finally been caught, another twist follows…

I have two daughters, and became part of the parents' despair. And the terrible thing is, that feeling never goes away, even now that they are grown up, the worries remain, always.
The author hits the nail on the head with his statement: 'we are thoughtless about what is the most precious to us...' [red]

A truly, phenomenal thriller, I stayed up late to finish the story. Really good writing, (I am familiar with his children’s books), this thriller comes highly recommended!

Easiest 5 star to give. Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for this arc. I leave my review voluntarily.

DI Ray Wilkins leads the investigation into the disappearance of a four year old girl from outside her nursery. He is joined by an ex colleague, Ryan Wilkins, who is hoping to be reinstated to his previous post after dismissal. Throw in Ray's wife, pregnant with twins, and we have a gripping plot set in Oxford. The relationship between Ray and Ryan worked really well. I liked the characterisation and the steady flow of the book, which kept me engrossed until the end. I hope we see more from this unlikely pairing, they work very well together! Thanks to Net Galley for my ARC.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Quercus Books for an advance copy of The Broken Afternoon, the second novel to feature DI Ray Wilkins and former DI Ryan Wilkins of Thames Valley Police.

Ray Wilkins is leading the investigation into the disappearance of four year old Poppy Clarke, who vanished from outside her nursery on a quiet, residential road in Oxford. Ryan Wilkins, now working as a security guard, is looking into another matter, despite being warned off by senior officers, and manages to help Ray in his own inimitable style.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Broken Afternoon, which is an absorbing police procedural combined with a more maverick approach that dovetail neatly. It is told mostly from Ray and Ryan’s points of view, giving the reader a good oversight of their very different approaches to both investigation and life.

The official investigation run by Ray seems very realistic to me, full of dead ends and policing blunders before stumbling to a conclusion. Ryan, on the other hand, has a mind like quicksilver and a more oblique way of thinking. It is his way that connects the dots and makes the breakthroughs in this novel. I was fascinated by the contrast and riveted by the twists in the novel and I certainly didn’t guess the solution.

It is the characters in the novel that make it such a great read for me. This is unusual as, normally, I’m all about the plot, but I just love what the author does with them and how he upends the standard stereotypes. Ray is a privately educated and an Oxford graduate. He is also black. Ryan is trailer park trash with little education and an anger management issue. He is white. Ray plays by the rules, while Ryan never met a rule he wasn’t inclined to break. In the first novel Ray was the lauded one, in this one he is more broken and relies on Ryan to keep him afloat. Somehow these two opposites are friends of a kind, the only friend they have. It is amazing that Ray who has it all is overwhelmed and Ryan who has nothing is upbeat and optimistic most of the time.

The Broken Afternoon is a good read that I have no hesitation in recommending.

I thoroughly enjoyed this second book and hope that the author keeps writing the series. The storyline is about the abduction of a little girl from nursery which is heartbreaking for the parents and the pressure on Ray who is leading the investigation is intense. He is also struggling at home with tensions between him and his pregnant wife, It was good to see how he leans on Ryan at times and the relationship between the two very different men develops. Ray’s boss is an interesting character who pulls no punches. He needs people on the ground quickly and so considers reinstating Ryan. Ryan hasn’t become any more sensible and does his very best to throw away all opportunities he is given but I was really rooting for him. I highly recommend this. Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC.

Yet another novel set in Oxford - it is certainly a popular place for writers! Although the disappearance of a little girl and the twists and turns involved in solving the mystery were an entertaining read, I have to say that I find the central gimmick of the two Wilkins detectives rather too contrived for my liking.

In Simon Mason’s A Killing In November we met Oxford DI Ryan Wilkins, and the book ended with his dismissal from the force for disciplinary reasons. In this book he is still in Oxford, but working as a security guard/general dogsbody at a van hire firm. His former partner, also named Wilkins, but Ray of that ilk, is now heading up the team that was once Ryan’s responsibility, and it is they who are tasked with investigating the abduction of a little girl from her nursery school.

Ryan and Ray are very different. Ryan is a single dad with a little boy, and somewhat rough round the edges. He was brought up on a caravan site and he is no matinee idol:

“He looked at himself in the mirror. Narrow face, grease-smear of scar tissue, big bony nose, all as familiar to him as his own smell.”

As a copper he was unorthodox, irreverent to his superiors, but with a real nose for the mean streets and those who walk them. Ray Wilkins is university educated – Balliol, no less – a smooth dresser, good looking and at ease in press conferences; his partner Diane is pregnant with twins.

The search for four year-old Poppy Clarke is urgent, driven as much by the clamours of the media as the tearful anguish of Poppy’s mother. Ray is painfully aware of the adage about “the first forty eight hours”, but clues are scant, and he has exhausted the other convention of “close family member”

Ryan, meanwhile, has a mystery of his own to solve. Investigating a suspicious noise in the compound at Van Central, he discovers a man he had last heard of doing five years for burglary in HMP Grendon. Mick Dick is big, black, and sometimes violent, but he is down on his luck, and was trying to get into a transit van just to find somewhere to sleep out of the pouring rain. Ryan sends him on his way. The next day Ryan hears on the local news that there has been a hit and run case near North Hinksey where a body has been found at the side of the road. It is that of Michael Dick.

When the body of Poppy Clarke is found in a shallow grave in nearby woodland, the nature of the investigation changes. The urgency is replaced by a grim determination to find the killer. Time is now removed from the equation. Ryan has been doing his own nosing about into the death of Mick Dick, and finds he had been in contact with another former prison inmate called Sean Cobb. Cobb, however, is a very different kind of criminal from Mick Dick, and when Ryan tells Ray, Cobb becomes very definitely a person of interest in the hunt for Poppy Clarke’s killer. Ryan has also received a ‘phone call from his former boss, DCI Wallace, offering Ryan a carrot in the shape of a possible reinstatement.

We also meet Tom Fothergill, the millionaire boss of a company that produces high end pushchairs and prams. As part of his charitable work, he has helped ex-cons like Dick and Cobb, but how is he involved in the abduction and death of Poppy Clark?

One of the promotional blurbs for this novel declares:

“Mason has reformulated Inspector Morse for the 2020s”

I am sorry, but that is not how I see this book. Yes, it is set in and around Oxford, but apart from The Broken Afternoon being every bit as good a read as, say, The Silence of Nicholas Quinn or The Remorseful Day, that’s where the resemblance ends. Mason’s book, while perhaps not being Noir in a Derek Raymond or Ted Lewis way, is full of dark undertones, bleak litter strewn public spaces, and the very real capacity for the police to get things badly, badly wrong. Simon Mason (right) has created coppers who certainly don’t spend melancholy evenings gazing into pints of real ale and then sit home alone listening to Mozart while sipping a decent single malt.

The killer of Poppy Clark is eventually ‘unmasked’, but perhaps that cliche is inappropriate, as he has been hiding in plain sight all along. The more squeamish male readers may want to skip the section towards the end set in the hospital maternity unit. It is superbly written, but graphic: I went through that experience with three of my four sons, but on the fourth occasion the ‘phone call came too late – or perhaps I drove to the hospital too slowly.

This is a very, very good book and, while Wilkins and Wilkins are chalk and cheese to Morse and Lewis, I can recommend The Broken Afternoon to anyone who enjoys a good atmospheric and convincing English police procedural. It is published by Riverrun/Quercus and will be out in all formats on 2nd February 2023.
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Simon Mason works as a fiction editor as well as an author and his talents show in this extraordinary thriller. Designed as the second instalment in the Ray Wilkins series, 'The Broken Afternoon' works equally well as a stand-alone. From the opening pages, when a little girl is abducted, to its climax, this is a well-written and gripping read. I liked the juxtaposition of two men who share the same initials and surnames, but whose lives are miles apart otherwise, and following how they each negotiate their challenges. Ryan Wilkins is a police officer under investigation for alleged insubordination who is now working as a night-time security guard, and drawn into an investigation involving an old friend. Ray Wilkins, meanwhile, is tasked with investigating the little girl’s abduction. Might the men be stronger if they join forces? Touching on some disturbing issues in a sensitive, mature way, this is a novel that deserves a wide readership. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the free ARC that allowed me to read Mason’s work and to produce this honest book review.

A fast paced and interesting detective novel. I don’t understand the point of having two characters with very similar names DI Ray Wilkins and ex-DI Ryan Wilkins, it was confusing and not at all humorous. The back-stories of the main protagonists are very well mixed into the plot.

I absolutely loved the first book in this detective series which is set in Oxford, featuring two detectives, Ray and Ryan who both have the surname Wilkins.
Ryan is a renegade who cannot obey orders and has anger management issues- however he is bright and relentless and gets things done. He has been suspended from the police for insubordination and is working as a night security guard, hoping he might get reinstated.
When an old friend of his appears in an agitated state whilst he is on guard duty, Ryan decides to investigate.
Meanwhile Ray is searching for a lost child who has been snatched from her nursery. However he is distracted as his wife is expecting twins and is in a terrible state with her pregnancy.
As the two men investigate the cases there appears to be a link but if Ryan continues to look into his friend’s murder he runs the risk that his reinstatement will be denied.
I really liked Ryan- he is an endearing character despite his difficult behaviour. His relationship with his young son is lovely and shows the redeeming and caring side of his nature.
Despite their differences Ray and Ryan have an understanding and Ray let’s Ryan help him with the case, particularly as he keeps running into difficulties.
This is the sort of book you just don’t want to put down. It goes into very dark areas at times when looking into the disappearance of the little girl, snatched by a paedophile. It shows a different side to Oxford, not the pretty tourist university’s town which most readers imagine.
The author has paced the plot perfectly and it makes for a compelling and entertaining read.
I would certainly recommend this book and although it could be read as a stand alone I would suggest reading the earlier novel as it is an excellent read and helps set the scene and background of the characters.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my advance copy

A completely absorbing, complex book. Very well written, great detail and observation of the tiny aspects of daily life that pass us by. Disturbing theme around paedophilia, the mental struggles of those afflicted and the terrible results of their desires - in this case a loss of life. Trying to follow the clues, the lead detective, Ray, is distracted by his home life; his wife is suffering terribly while expecting twins and she needs him more than he can give. Meanwhile Ryan, an ex-detective of the same force, is baffled by the hit and rum killing of a schoolfriend and simply can't help investigating without permission. On the cusp of a possible reinstatement he risks his entire future. As the two men each take their tortuous paths, their worlds collide resulting in failure, success and more failure. An incredibly addictive read.

A very enjoyable book. I hadn't read the first in the series which didn't affect the plot of this book except I kept wondering why Ryan had been discharged from the police. It is not always clear which character the author is talking about. It doesn't help that the two main characters are Ray Wilkins and Ryan Wilkins. Despite these minor irritations I rattled through the book and eagerly await the next in the series especially as there are few outstanding questions.

I am given to understand that fast food is formulated to pander to the human craving for sugar, salt and fats. They say you can hardly eat it fast enough. Strange opening sentence for a book review but I guess you can see where this is going? Yes, The Broken Afternoon has all the elements for a reading frenzy for those who like detective thrillers. A child goes missing, a parent's worst nightmare, so it begins. A dishonourably discharged DI loses a school chum and unbeknown to him at the time, there's a connection. A fast paced, twisty story ensues and it's hard to draw breath.
However, like fast food, it's over before you know it and not particularly memorable. Some of the character's names are poorly thought through, the dishonourably discharged DI, although an excellent detective would be a ticking time bomb if reinstated, so not very realistic.
Strange thing is though.......I'm hungry for another fix! How will the character of DI Ryan Wilkins change when he's back in harness? I'm not sure it will, so he'll be back before the top brass quicker than you can eat a mayo topped french fry.

This is a great read with a twisty plot and a maverick detective, Ryan Wilkins, who is trying to get reinstated. I wasn’t totally convinced by the other Wilkins -Ray- but he improved as the book went on. It’s gritty and spares no punches as a 4 year old is abducted but I was hooked from early on and would read more in this series- really good police procedural but not predictable.

This grips the reader from page one to the unexpected conclusion. Two DIs, one dismissed for misconduct but hoping to be reinstated, share the surname Wilkins. One called Ryan and the other Ray can also be confusing. As ever in detective stories, both have family problems. Ryan’s son, also Ryan lives with his cousin and aunt. Ray’s wife is having a bad time carrying twins while he is absorbed in this case. A little girl disappears from her nursery school. There are many hopeful leads and several potential suspects. Ryan gets involved despite his suspension and contributes helpfully to solving the case. Ray becomes a feature on television. Several times they think the case is closed but more evidence comes to light. This is a cleverly constructed story and is very well written. The conclusion is unexpected but a perfect ending. I strongly recommend this book. It is a great read!

On a regular afternoon, in a middle class neighbourhood, a Mother is distracted for a couple of minutes outside of a nursery, and a child goes missing....A tale full of lots of characters, none of them particularly likeable, and all a little emotionless. A book that is obviously written from a male, middle class, Eurocentric viewpoint....I don't think that I am the target Audi.