DEAD END: Sequel to The Candy Cane Club

Gemma died not knowing who killed her.Life can be tough enough if one has the misfortune to have been into the body of the wrong gender. What with having to cope with rejection by family and friends, animosity, hatred and often violence and aggression from a society that refuses to understand because it is easier to hate than to accept and change one’s attitude. Just living each day as it comes is an uphill struggle for those fortunate enough to have either the finances or the support to exist within a social group.For those left on the outside, the likelihood of slipping into prostitution, drugs and crime is high. The potential to be abused for the purposes of sex or pornography is even higher. There are just not that many well-paid jobs for those who have high medication bills, the possibility of expensive surgery and having to live day by day all at the same time. The temptation to slide into prostitution to obtain that little bit extra is always present. For Gemma, a young person who started life as a boy, that temptation ended in the operating theatre of a hospital A & E after becoming an unwitting and unknowing pawn in an escalating war between those who manipulate and use those unfortunates as sexual slaves for personal gain. Gemma’s death was the second of what could be a lot more, unless the police managed to identify and arrest those responsible. A tough job under normal circumstances, made tougher by the fact that the victims and potential victims were all wary of the authorities that represented a society that hates them.Now a Detective and a married woman, who is best qualified to get into a community that feared the authorities as much as those who enslaved them, but Detective Nikki Calder. Yet again, Nikki goes undercover with a TV documentary film crew to attempt to get to the bottom of who is doing what and to whom. This time, though, she does not have to pretend to belong to a different gender, just a different nationality. But being Canadian, pretending to be American isn’t that tough.Just as she begins to make some progress, she gets some news that will make things even more complicated; Robert Telford, the Candy Cane Killer escapes from prison. It is a good chance that he has some unfinished business in Nikki’s back yard.Can she do it again?