Blue Line Blues: Boy to Bobby in Ten Weeks

By Will Esling

It seems none of us can get enough of police dramas, docu-dramas and fly-on-the-wall tv programmes about the police. But, who really knows what it's like to be a cop? To experience in one day things people might not experience in a whole lifetime! A murder, a suicide on a railway line, a fatal road accident, a drowning, a battered girlfriend or wife, a gangland drug feud... AND then experience these things over and over again, practically every day of your career.Joe Public is captivated by policing and can't get enough of it. So why does someone end up joining the Boys in Blue whether it's in 1977 or 2020? Blue Line Blues is a deeply revealing new book and Will Esling invites you to join him on the journey of Graham Griffiths, as he embarks upon his police career in the late 1970s. He is fresh out of school, with a part-time job as a swimming pool attendant. Now on his way to train as one of the Boys in Blue. Blue Line Blues is set in the winter of 1977/78 at a Police Training Academy in Wales. Graham Griffiths joins the police force almost by default and doesn't find initial training all its cracked up to be. He juggles training, a dysfunctional home life and the unwanted attentions of a Police Sergeant's daughter at home, whilst trying his best to qualify as a police officer. He encounters racism, bullying and criminals, where you would least expect them.The new recruits have to contend with the demands of the training staff and the rigorous regime. Relationships form as the class progresses and events take an unexpected turn in more ways than one when Graham Griffiths falls for the beautiful WPC Scarlett Blizzard, who has a hidden secret of her own.Along with the experiences of initial training, we frequently visit the private life of Graham Griffiths. He has a bolshie unionist brother, whom he comes into conflict more and more after joining the force. Blue Line Blues is the author's debut novel, taken from his own experiences training to become a British Bobby in the late 1970s. The story is poignant, full of humour, romance, pathos and intrigue.A book to make you smile and think back to the days of your first job... "I could have come up the lyrics 'I was looking for a job, and then I found a job and heaven knows I'm miserable now...' years before Morrissey sang this with The Smiths in 1984."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B08B73KKGW
• ISBN13: 9798654437235
• Release Date: June 2020
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.29 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"