I can only name 3-4 authors that can write 22 books in a series and still have it feel fresh. Angela Marsons is one of those authors. D.I. Kim Stone is a hard nosed, stubborn detective, ultra loyal to her team of 3 and in this book they are sent out of their comfort zone to assist the police department in another town on 2 cases.......the disappearance of 2 young boys a week apart AND to covertly investigate that very department for corruption. The only other thing I really want to say is that I applaud the author (and give 5 stars) because I really had no idea where the story was going. Very well researched and very well written. Thanks to the author, publisher and Net Galley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you for my copy of this book to read and review.

I’ve read all of the Kim Stone books since book one and will never tire of them.

Again, an original and gripping by storyline.

As I always say, these can be read as standalone but as there is continuity with the characters, I think it’s best to read them in order.

One of my favourite detective series.

Angie Marsons is a "must read" author, every time she puts out a new book. I enjoyed this book very much.

Lewis and Noah are missing boys and Kim and her team are very good at finding the missing. However, they are missing from Blackpool, a jurisdiction where Kim has nothing to say and where her involvement isn't exactly going to win hearts. Kim has a way of rubbing others up the wrong way but she has been asked to help out so help out she does.

A complicated storyline coupled with a sad reality about teenagers who can be prickly and yet who need love the most.

Loved all the characters in this book and the dynamics between them.

4.5 stars from me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture.

Loved this book, excellent writing once again. Can't wait for the next one. A brilliant author. You really feel the connection with the team

LITTLE CHILDREN is the 22nd book in the D.I. Kim Stone crime-thriller series by best-selling author Angela Marsons. This novel can be read as a standalone. Angela Marsons remains one of my favorite mystery authors, and her publisher, Bookouture, always publishes the very best novels. I have read all of her books…and she keeps getting better. I don’t want this series to end!

This novel explores the dark world of children abduction as well police corruption.

It was so refreshing to touch base with Kim’s CID team again: DS Bryant, DS Penn, and DC Stacey Wood. Her team are driven and compassionate in their work. The story involves kidnapping, child abuse, murder and police corruption. The characters keep getting stronger and stronger. We also touch base with Kim’s boss, DCI Woodward (Woody), Keats, the local pathologist, and who could forget Kim’s faithful dog, Barney. Love that dog!

Kim and her whole team are assigned to assist in the investigation of a boy, Lewis who went missing in Blackpool, one week ago. Now a second boy, Noah is missing as of last night…two in the same week.

Twelve-year-old Lewis Stephens walks out of an arcade and disappears. A week later, eleven-year-old Noah Reid vanishes from the pier over the beach. There are no leads and no clues.

Detective Kim Stone and her team are requested by Woody to assist his colleague, DCI Miranda Walker, to travel to Blackpool to join the hunt for the two children as well as highlight any inappropriate police behavior. The team heads to the site.

When they get there, everyone is convinced that Lewis ran away. Kim feels the two boys were abducted and are linked.

And when another boy turns up dead back home, his body bruised and broken, Kim is more determined to solve the case before more children are taken. So much danger and no one to trust.

Then Stacey discovers a scrap paper under her computer that contained three names…A valuable piece of the puzzle. Who put it there?

A completely gripping page-turning crime thriller from no.1 multi-million-copy bestseller Angela Marsons. This is a fast-paced novel with well-developed characters and an intriguing plot. I really enjoyed this one and feel that it is the best book to date in this series. Another Winner!

Many thanks to the author, Bookouture and Netgalley for my digital copy.

Holy shit!!! This was amazing!! Sorry for the language but my god this was so good I couldn’t put it down, I love love love Kim Stone, and Bryant was amazing! Super fab story, well researched and brilliantly written as always by the super talented Angela

Another superb addition to the Kim Stone series, this series keeps getting better and better, if that’s possible 🙂An extremely taut and page turner of a story. Very emotional at times and uncomfortable to read but Angela Marsons knows how to do it and so you feel safe in that knowledge . I can’t recommend highly enough this book as well as the whole series. 5 stars all the way

Kim and her team have been sent to another police force to try and see if there was any truth in police corruption allegations from an unknown source. At the same time as they are there two boys are currently missing and time is running out to find them. Kim soon gets involved in the case as this what she is trained for and is very good at. What her and her team uncover will cause ripples both in the community and the police station.
Yet another great book in this series. loofing forward to the next one.

Wow! Wow! Wow! Book number 22 in the Kim Stone series and it just gets better and better with each new book. This one had me so engrossed I read it in one day.
Fast paced, well written and loads of action, what's not to like?
Highly recommended and an easy 5 star rating!

Absolutely loved this! Angela Marsons can do no wrong and I always wait in anticipation of they next one.
It was fun to have new scenery with a mix of Blackpool with the Black Country also getting some time as well. The story was captivating and I didn't see the ending coming until right to the end!

Detective Kim Stone Book 22
Great series, real all the books. Would recommend you read the whole series.
Kim and her team head to Blackpool to look for missing boys and subtly delve into local police corruption.
As per previous reviews on this book series, Detective Stone does not play well with others outside her own team, but damn! she is good at her job.
this book delves into the world of police corruption, missing children and the secretive world of the dark web.
Excellent novel as always and look forward to book 23.

It is difficult to say anything new about this tremendous series, which has incredibly reached its twenty-second instalment. As always the writing is excellent, the plotting exemplary and the principals interesting and well drawn. Angela marsons always introduces new elements to keep the series fresh and here Kim Stone and her colleagues are deployed to Blackpool to help find missing boys but also to look into police corruption. Excellent1

Wow. Just wow. With every book this amazing author just gets better and better. I don't know how she can improve on perfection but that's just what she does. In a crowded genre her books stand out by a mile.
This series is just absolutely spellbinding and reading about Kim and her team is like catching up with old friends. All the characters in every one of her books are so brilliantly realised, so very real.
This one had so many twists - every chapter leaving you wanting more and questioning everything.
Wonderful storytelling. A masterclass in suspense.
A masterpiece.

Little Children by Angela Marsons is the 22nd book in the Superb Detective Kim Stone series and another 5⭐️ read. Angela's latest book was another excellent from start to finish and it will not disappoint. I just the way Angela writes and I love the detective Kim Stone character - she is one of the best characters out there to read, hence why we are on the 22nd book within this series.
I can not praise and recommend this author enough, she is an excellent writer and every book I have read by her has just had me glued to my kindle until I have read her latest book and this book was no different.

Another 5 ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ read.

EXCERPT: Stacey was distracted from her thoughts by the sound of an email pinging into her inbox.
Fantastic. The footage she'd requested from the amusement arcade was starting to come through. She pulled her keyboard forward and then paused.
Beneath it was a piece of paper no bigger than three inches square.
She knew it hadn't been there last night. She turned it over to see that it wasn't scrap paper at all. It contained three names. Nothing else.
Just three names.

ABOUT 'LITTLE CHILDREN': The boy keeps walking, his curl-covered head down and his arms folded protectively across his body. The arcade is full of happy families but he is all alone. It’s the last time he is ever seen…

Twelve-year-old Lewis Stephens walks out of a seafront arcade and disappears. A week later, eleven-year-old Noah Reid vanishes from the pier stretching out over the beach. There are no leads and no clues.

Detective Kim Stone doesn’t play well with others. But she has been sent halfway across the country to Blackpool, to join the hunt for the two children – and to find out if the dark whispers about corruption in the local force are justified. Her boss insists it must be he knows she won’t stop searching for the truth no matter who gets in her way. Kim just wants to find these lost children before it’s too late.

On arrival, she knows instantly something isn’t right. Why is everyone so convinced Lewis ran away? Why don’t his family seem to care that he’s missing? With time running out, she and her team work tirelessly to prove the abductions are linked – a job made harder when a list of cases is left for them in secret. The list proves one of their fellow cops is rotten to the core… but who?

And when another boy turns up dead back home, his body bruised and broken, Kim learns that the criminals she’s facing are more ruthless than she could have ever imagined. She and her team must solve the case before more children are taken. But the closer they get, the greater the danger – and they cannot trust a single soul…

MY THOUGHTS: If you haven't yet read any of Angela Marsons' Kim Stone series, don't be put off by the fact that this is the twenty-second book in the series. If you're going to jump in, this is a good place to do it as Little Children is easily able to be read as a stand-alone.

Unusually for Marsons books, Little Children started off quite slowly. But don't worry, the situation takes a little setting up, especially as it requires Kim and her team to move out of their area to work with another team at Woody's request. "Work with" might be a bit of an overstatement as Kim and her team find themselves excluded and sidelined at every turn.

There have been complaints of "inappropriate police behaviour" in another branch of the force that needs looking into on the quiet and, as the same branch is struggling with two cases of missing children and all is currently quiet on Kim's home patch, it seems an opportunity made in heaven.

Unless you're Kim

Or the team she is being sent to investigate.

Little Children is a particularly hard-hitting read concerning child abduction, abuse, rape, murder and police corruption. During the course of the investigation Kim is called back to her home turf, taking Penn with her, upsetting the equilibrium of her team and removing two important skill sets from the investigation, leaving Stacey and Bryant to continue trying to find Lewis and uncover who is behind the corruption without them.

Marsons always manages to keep her plots fresh. I don't know where she gets her ideas from and I'm not sure I really want to know. Little Children is dark and gritty and features some truly terrible characters. I just gobbled it up! It is frightening to know that there are such monstrous people out there who collude with other such monstrous people to perpetrate such atrocities against the vulnerable. I just hope there is more than one Kim Stone like person fighting against them.

Frost makes remote appearances and her interaction with Kim provides a some much needed light relief.

Bring on #23!

Love the cover, but it's not at all relevant to the storyline.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

#LittleChildren #NetGalley

MEET THE AUTHOR: ANGELA MARSONS is the author of the Kim Stone Crime series. She discovered a love of writing at Primary School when a short piece on the rocks and the sea gained her the only merit point she ever got.
Angela wrote the stories that burned inside and then stored them safely in a desk drawer.
After much urging from her partner, she began to enter short story competitions in Writer's News resulting in a win and three short listed entries.
She used the Amazon KDP program to publish two of her earlier works before concentrating on her true passion - Crime.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Bookouture for providing an e-ARC of Little children by Angela Marsons for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

Another fantastic installment of my favourite series, book 22 and still just as good as all the others! I literally feel as though I know Stone and team personally as I have been with them for the very first book, I just love the relationship between Stone and Frost and found parts in this book hilarious regarding said relationship.
This book is based on a very hard hitting subject of illegal fighting involving children and at times was very harrowing but there is also another storyline going on in the background shall we say, just brilliant as always. Another very easy 5 stars from me.

Kim Stone and her team are sent off to Blackpool to help in an investigation into the disappearance of two teenage boys. They are also tasked with seeing if there is a rotten apple in the Blackpool team. Not something the group are comfortable with. When they arrive it is plain that their help is neither asked for or required. They seem to be totally convinced that Lewis has run away, after all that's what his family have told them. They are concentrating on Noah, the other missing teen. It soon becomes obvious this team do not work the same way hers do. Bryant is paired up with Roy, someone more different to him would be difficult to find. Kim sets Stacey on the search for Lewis and along with Penn go to see the parents. When Kim is called back home after the discovery of the body of a young man, This makes their search for the Blackpool boys even more urgent.

I really enjoyed this one. It was a wee bit different with the group out of their comfort zone. It was also good for the story to not be directly tied to Kim's past. I'm already looking forward to #23! Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me read & review this book.

Another fab read by Angela Marsons. I love this series and I love Kim Stone, there definitely should be a TV series made of these books.
22 books in it just gets better. Like the proceeding books this one can be read as a standalone, however I recommend going back to the start as you’re missing a treat if you haven’t read them.

Missing boys bring Kim and her team to Blackpool to help with the investigation and review the work of the local force who don’t seem to be taking it seriously. This book had the main investigation running alongside a police corruption angle which I really enjoyed. The Kim Stone series is one of the best police procedurals around.

As always, I’m am looking forward to the next one in the series!

WOW, just when you think the stories cant get any better, book 22 had me from the start, it is a dark read but as usual there is some humour in the mix, I love this team, they gel together really well, Kim was her usual self but we saw a softer side to her as well, I am really looking forward to book 23, they just don't come quick enough for me ...... lol

At some time around last Christmas, I wrote about certain things that there is no shame in not doing if, for whatever reason, you don’t feel up to it. Such as reading Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister if you’re not feeling quite well enough to concentrate on every single, critical detail. Or doing a parachute jump if your fear of heights could cause you to be terribly sick all over your instructor.

Well, now I have the most important thing of all to add to that list: if you’ve just climbed into bed and are tempted to pick up a book, just to read a couple of chapters before drifting off to sleep, do not – I repeat, do NOT – make said book anything written by Angela Marsons. And especially not this one: her latest, Little Children.

I’d meant to save it to read during a long weekend away. But I didn’t – couldn’t – wait that long. So, despite Thursday having been one of those days – an impending project deadline making the day job occupy almost every waking hour, some unknown person at the end of an email from Head Office nagging me over some unfinished admin for good measure and the need to squeeze at least some of what would have been Friday’s work in too – when I did finally crawl between the sheets, my hands were still drawn of their own accord to my kindle. There couldn’t be any harm in reading just the first few chapters, right?

The result was an almost entirely sleepless night. Because, this book. Oh, holy God, this book. Not only is it one where each chapter, indeed almost each sentence leaves you wanting more – with Queen Angie, I’ve come to expect that. But it’s also one where the plot is puzzling enough to keep me well and truly hooked from start to finish. It’s one where the subject matter is so hard hitting and so harrowing that, despite my being glued to the pages, I’m also reading them whilst feeling physically tense. It’s one where the apparent extent of corruption, misconduct and misogyny in another police force – something that’s only right for crime fiction authors to cover, following the terrible killing of Sarah Everard and the subsequent damning report on the Metropolitan police – presents such a stark contrast to DI Kim Stone’s own team that I couldn’t help but wonder how realistic it was that behaviour like this could possibly be allowed to continue. Only for every single piece of the puzzle to fall neatly, and plausibly into place as Angie masterfully demonstrated how she hadn’t been showing me the whole picture.

I might have paused to reel at how beautifully plotted this storyline is, as well as felt a bit of emotion at the fates of three young boys. But I wasn’t given the time. Because the next chapter had me laughing out loud at a comic moment between Kim and her old nemesis, journalist Tracy Frost. And I haven’t even mentioned the opening chapter, which is another example of the reader being given just enough information to assume, and fear the worst, and then have that nagging doubt in the back of their mind almost throughout the entire book.

I know I’ve said this many times before, but it amazes me no less each time. There are other authors whose writing can bring a lump to my throat. There are even a few who can bring tears to my eyes. There are other authors who can make me laugh, and other authors who can leave me gaping in admiration. But there are no other authors who can have me doing all four of those things in the space of as many chapters. This is a skill that’s unique to Angela Marsons, and it’s just one of the reasons why her books are so special.

I make my only two, tiny critical points only to show how hard I’m having to search for any nits to pick. I don’t understand the late change from the pre-publication title of Missing Boys, which I actually feel would have been more appropriate. And does it really have to be the case that the secondary character of an ethnic minority is the only one who’s obviously the good guy? I get that this is the safe option, especially when it doesn’t compromise the storyline in any way. But ultimately, every race, every religion and every set of economic and social circumstances has its good and bad eggs and I do think that readers, authors and publishers all need to be grown up enough to recognise this.

But these points, if indeed you can call them that, do nothing to stop me from asking the key question. Is Little Children, even my its author’s own incredibly high standards, Angela Marsons’ best book yet?

Several days’ contemplation haven’t changed my mind, so I’m going to say it. I really think it is. Forget the maximum 5-star rating that this and other review sites will allow me to give: this book is in a seven-star class of one.

My thanks to Netgalley for the digital ARC of this book, which was published in the UK by Bookouture on 12th August. I have reviewed it voluntarily and honestly. I will post my review on Goodreads, Amazon and my social media pages.