Ticket To Ride — Janet Neel

After her award-winning series featuring civil servant Francesca Wilson and policeman John McLeish (all available from Ostara Crime), Janet Neel created a new heroine in Jules Carlisle, a recently-qualified lawyer struggling to establish herself in a London law firm specialising in immigration issues and helping asylum seekers. First published in 2005, Ticket to Ride is a remarkably prescient mystery, flagging up the exploitation of illegal immigrants tempted by the offer of work in agriculture in East Anglia and begins with the discovery of eight bodies in shallow graves on a beach near King's Lynn. The trail leads to refugees from the former Yugoslavia and atrocities committed during the conflict in Bosnia in the 1990s. Jules Carlisle's firm, as well as the police and MI5, become involved in uncovering the network organising this human traffic and whilst Jules' unconventional upbringing might prove useful to the investigation, her chaotic private life threatens to derail her legal career before it begins as well as distracting her from  close and personal danger.