BLUE: Keeping the Peace and Falling to Pieces

A searingly honest memoir of life, policing, and falling apart, Blue is a memoir of crime and calamity, of adventure and achievement, of friendship and failure, of laughter and loss, of the very best and worst of humanity, of serious illness and slow recovery. It is an intensely moving and personal insight into what it is to be a police officer in Britain today. John Sutherland joined the Met in 1992, rising quickly through the ranks. He worked across the capital, experiencing first hand the enormous satisfaction as well as the endless trauma that a life in blue can bring. There were career-defining moments - commanding armed sieges, saving lives and helping to take dangerous people off the streets, but for every case with a happy ending, there were others that ended in desperate sadness. Early in 2013, John suffered a major breakdown and consequent battle with crippling depression. After a career spent racing to be the first at the scene of crimes and catastrophes, he found himself in pieces, unable to put one foot in front of the other. His last operational posting was the Borough Commander for Southwark and he was an experienced Hostage and Crisis Negotiator having served on both the national and international cadres. Now he is a popular crime writer. With a new epilogue for this paperback edition, 288pp.