“Steps to Heaven” by Wendy Cartmell. The Holidays are an excellent time to relax and read so I downloaded a good number of books on my Nook. One of them came from Wendy Cartmell via Twitter. She generously gave me a copy of “Steps to Heaven” and wished me happy readings.
She should have mentioned that it would be creepy!
“Steps to Heaven” features Sergeant Major Crane, a Special Investigations Branch Investigator, in the UK Armed Forces. He is married and tends to bring his work home. This can lead to tensed situations with his devoted and very patient wife, Tina. The cases Sgt. Major Crane gets to investigate in the book will only increase that tension since Tina has some plans of her own.
The team helping Sgt. Major Crane consists of Staff Sergeant Billy Williams and Sergeant Kim Weston. Their characters and style of work clash, the supervisors demand results a.s.a.p. and, the garrisons no longer seem to be the safe community they used to represent. Someone is killing young officers and their sons and Crane’s team has to stop them.
At first, people question whether the young officers were murdered since they had all served in battle overseas. To be exact, they had all served in Afghanistan. Was it possible that the stress of the tours became too much? Was suicide really a possibility? But then why did the sons have to die as well? Were the soldiers protecting their sons from serving in Afghanistan or a similar future battle ground? Or, was it possible that something far more sinister was going on?
Sgt. Major Crane fights several battles in this book: at the home front, on the garrisons, with supervisors and teammates and most importantly, with himself. His strength, his humanity and love for family and friends, wins the battle until he finds himself duct taped to a chair. And the chair is facing the awful scene Crane had wished to prevent in the first place.
“Steps to Heaven” is a great read and it makes Wendy Cartmell a writer to watch!