Book info

• Title Street Duty Case One: Knock Down
• Author Chris Ould
• Year 2012
• Genre Young Adult

Fourteen-year-old Ashleigh Jarvis is so scared and running so fast that she doesn't see the truck that knocks her down. Holly Blades is sixteen and a new type of policewoman - a T.P.O. or Trainee Police Officer - a new team of teenagers, recruited early and fast-tracked into the police force. After only two weeks on the job, Holly is first on the scene of the road traffic accident. But when her routine assignment of accompanying Ashleigh to hospital reveals a shocking secret about the young girl, Holly becomes convinced that there is more to the incident than she first thought. Unable to persuade her superiors that they should dig deeper however, Holly is forced to embark on a course of action which may reveal the truth, but which could also end her career in the police before it has really started...

Thoughts

I’ve had this in my digital library for a really long time, I’m not sure what prompted me to pick it up in the first place. It was a good read, the kind of young adult book that puts teenagers in more adult situations (although the trainee police thing was a believable setup) and then you find they bring their own solutions that the adults would never have been able to do. I also liked the way this was written, Chris Ould has done a lot of TV work, and this felt very scenic - each chapter a snapshot of a scene before moving on to the next.

Rating: 4 / 5