Sun Hill expose a prostitution ring

Prostitution can be a nasty business – especially when it involves under-age girls. Fifteen-year-old Helen Harris has been missing from home for two years when she’s found on the streets in a bad way, covered in bruises and cigarette burns and the Sun Hill officers have to tread carefully to get her story... DC Terry Perkins and DS Max Carter are first to talk to Helen, but she won’t talk to them. All she’ll say is that she wants her boyfriend Hassan Kaymaz to come to the hospital. Terry tracks him down – and finds him in the arms of another teenage girl called Abi. Hassan says he hasn’t dated Helen for two years and refuses to go to the hospital. It takes DC Grace Dasari’s softly softly approach to get Helen to reveal that Hassan’s uncle, Alican Aygun, forced her into prostitution and hurt her. The officers realise that Hassan is part of the set-up, grooming the girls for brothels around Britain. But can they convince Helen of that? And will she finger Alican so that he can be nicked before he gets his hands on Abi? Perhaps an equally big question is: can Max be relied upon to do his job properly. He’s developed a taste for cocaine and that can’t be good for anyone – especially him!

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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.