No Man is Just a Numbe by Robert Clarke is a memoir that draws on the author's experiences as a police constable and firearms officer.
I found the storyline captivating, particularly the true accounts of his time on the force, which had me fully engaged.
However, I had some reservations about the portrayal of the author's personal relationship with his wife.
Despite this, the book offers a unique glimpse into the world of law enforcement, making it a compelling read for those interested in true stories and policing.
Thank you to NetGalley and Troubador Publishing for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Thank you Troubador and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

Robert Clarke was a police officer and this is his memoir.

I was really drawn to this book as I wanted to hear an account of Robert’s experiences through his lens in the UK. The book promised a life’s work of policing and true crime. Also having a LE background from the late 90’s I was excited to dive in. As Robert exclaims policing is a very diverse career path and one of the incredible things is that it can take you on many trajectories under that umbrella. Thankfully the “bastardisation” of earlier years has immensely improved, yet like any career path this is one that can attract more risk takers and Alpha types than perhaps other paths, and in some roles this is absolutely necessary to get a job done.

Robert shares not only his experience of his policing career but also his marriage. This is where the book fell apart for me and I DNF at 63%. I was really torn throughout most of the book as I read it. The policing parts were what I signed up to read and in all honesty I think a much better product would have eventuated if Robert had stuck within this content. I get that there is a life outside of the workplace and that the dichotomies of work / home life is one that needs to be carefully balanced,

Robert prides himself on his motivation, hard working attitude and integrity throughout his book. This may have been true as a police officer and for this reason I sincerely wish that he stuck with purely his policing story and left his personal life where it belongs. If he had just written his policing perspective and left out his personal life and the “positivity insights” this book would have been a much better read and alot more palatable.

Sadly the sidelines of the book is what, for me made it fall into a big heap. I wasn’t interested in the often repetitive “positivity insights” dotted throughout chapters, they really fell flat. I also was often reeling at the man who continually describes himself in the book as full of integrity, motivated and hardworking as this was so incongruous as the person he describes himself to be outside of work. I failed to see these traits when he spoke of his family and in fact, the utter lack of respect Robert shows for his wife (probably ex wife now) is heartbreaking.

He describes how he meets his wife and goes along as a reluctant plus one to a pub date with his best mate with her. Throughout the book he has nothing nice to say about this lady. Yet, although he states she is boring and worse, he remains with her as it seems easy, and almost like he pities her. I am not convinced that she had him on a pedestal, as he so oft implies or if rather he created his own soapbox that was out of her reach. Either way, when I ditched the book she is still with him and has now become his wife and mother to his children, even though he had nothing pleasant to say about his family.

At the 63% mark in the book, Robert speaks about he and his team each being given an A4 piece of paper . If you have read the book you will know what I am referring to. After everything he had previously written about his wife, I was enraged by the lack of time, empathy and personal insight he gave to this exercise and what ever-lasting negative effects would ripple for his immediate family if this paper was ever needed to be read.

I cannot imagine how Roberts wife, children or those close to either party feel reading this book. He portrays himself and his role within his marriage poorly. This cemented the decision for this to be a DNF for me.

This book has been hovering in my mental space for a week or more since I dropped it. I will consider going back to revisit it in future, simply because I would like to think that in the 34% content I did not read redeems itself .

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this eARC.

I put off writing this review because as much as I LOVED the police officer memoir part of this book, I HATED the inclusion of the demise of this man's relationship., he blames everything on his wife, as though she even forced him into marriage ! I found that disrespectful and EXTREMELY irrelevant regarding the reason why most of us chose this book. This book became a DNF (Did Not Finish) for me at about 50 pages in, as the writer seemed to be writing a "revenge book" to talk about how much he hates his spouse or ex spouse. For someone so aggressive about successfully steering his career, I really doubt that was as passive as he writes concerning his personal life. Really, an editor should have pulled all this many areas in this book where the author shreds his ex-wife (I couldn't stand to read far enough to see if this ended on divorce, but if the author wasn't divorced when he wrote this book, he will or SHOULD be immediately after this book is published). For someone so accountable and proud of his professional life, he ruins the read by blaming every negative area of his life - even HIS affair - on his wife.

I really didn’t enjoy this book. It wasn’t well written- the language is clumsy and repetitive. I wonder if it was edited properly. I wanted to like it as I am always reading police procedural novels and as this is a memoir , I thought it would give the real side of the criminal world.

I thought the book portrayed an honest and accurate account of the Police force. Robert described his life in great detail and some elements of his work in particular were difficult to read. It is unflinching but authentic. I enjoyed it.

While this memoir is no different from other similar ones, the writing is gripping and the author shows you every part of police life you could want to see.

I think this was a largely enjoyable read, and I found the more horrific parts well told with excellent depth.

This was such a real and raw account of some of the instances that the author saw in his time as a serving Police Officer. At times I had my heart in my mouth so I can't even imagine what it was like in real time. Very readable and definitely one that I would not only recommend but would read again myself

An enjoyable if not at times traumatic look back at the authors career in the Police force and various situations he saw and handled and at times the toll it took on him and his personal life
It was told in a very’ ‘real’ way and you could feel the emotion in the writing
Lots of books about ex Police etc at the moment but this stands out for me because of the writing

This was a good policing book written by a former cop in England. Once he got on the force he became restless with what he was doing, and kept trying other areas of it, looking for what would fulfill him. His unsatisfying marriage added to things, and eventually he knew he had to make some serious changes. It also goes into the effect of accumulated trauma from seeing countless shocking events during his career, and how it had to be dealt with eventually.

I received a free copy of, No Man is Just a Number, by Robert Clarke, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Robert started his career as a police officer in the 90's. This is an interesting book, about a cop in Britain, and the many criminals and victims he met.