Purgatory is a Place Too

When a troubled teenager confides in a young stock car racing driver, Eve McGinty, that she is being trafficked by a local gang for sex, Eve doesn’t know how to react. It sounds far-fetched and yet she can’t ignore it.

When Eve looks for help, a social worker is adamant that the girl, Jessica, is making up stories to gain attention. No one seems inclined to help Eve sort fact from fiction. Not even the police or local newspaper. To make matters worse, Jessica is asserting that all the men involved are of Pakistani origin. To avoid being accused of racism, Eve recruits Sahmir, the younger brother of her Pakistani friend Nasim, to go undercover with her. Together they set out to disprove the claims that their hometown is the hotbed of yet another shocking grooming-gang scandal.

Unfortunately, Eve can’t confide in her race team, nor any of her colleagues at the garage where she works as a motor mechanic, and her increasingly odd behaviour is causing them concern. With the added pressure of a full racing calendar, as she attempts to become the first ever female Formula Two Stocks World Champion, it isn’t surprising that events begin to spiral out of control…

An action-packed and hard-hitting exposé of the systemic failure of the authorities to safe-guard a generation of young girls from abuse in the towns of Northern Britain, this book fictionalises true events and can be read as a standalone.