Cross Purpose

By (author) Claire MacLeary

When her disgraced ex-police husband suddenly dies, Maggie Laird’s unremarkable life in an Aberdeen suburb is turned upside down. With the bills mounting and the pressure on, she’s forced to take on her husband’s struggling detective agency, enlisting the help of her neighbour ‘Big Wilma’. And so an unlikely but very determined partnership is born. The discovery of a crudely mutilated body by a gang of kids draws Maggie and Wilma into a world of sink estates, shady childminding, dodgy dealers, and drug abuse – and gives Maggie a chance to clear her dead husband’s name. Claire MacLeary fashions a surprising, gritty, sometimes darkly humorous tale that combines police corruption, gangs and murder with a paean to friendship, loyalty and how ‘women of a certain age’ can beat the odds.