Stuart GouldenA local author has broken into the Amazon Top 100 digital downloads this Christmas.
Now Then Lad…: A Yorkshire Dales Copper on the Beat by Mike Pannett is described as a “true-life Heartbeat for the twenty-first century.” Although the paperback was originally published in 2008 and had already sold tens of thousands of copies, the Kindle edition was chosen as one of the titles in this year’s “12 Days of Kindle” promotion with all titles priced at 99 pence, and and has subsequently seen a meteoric rise up the charts. On Friday afternoon he broke into the top 100 for the first time and by midnight he had reached number 71, sat in between The Woman in Black by Kerry Wilkinson and Mrs Jones by B. A. Morton.
Mike Pannett was born in York, and joined the Metropolitan Police in 1988 before taking up a new posting as a local bobby in rural North Yorkshire in 1997. It was quite a change from the Met, where he dealt with riots on the capital’s streets and drug gangs in Battersea, and found out what it was like to stare down the wrong end of a sawn-off shotgun.
He became a rural beat officer and eventually, a wildlife officer. In 2005 he starred in the BBC’s Country Cops and was inspired to write about his adventures in the North Yorkshire force in this autobiography.
Now, instead of hunting down knife-wielding muggers, he’s chasing runaway bullocks, holding up the Last Night of the Proms traffic to escort a lost mole across the road and combing the countryside for the villains who stole the Colonel’s balls.
Mike’s first year on his new patch is told in seventeen chapters which interweave his escapades on the beat month by month together with his growing knowledge of a landscape that changes with the seasons and some snapshots from his off-duty life. Now Then Lad…: A Yorkshire Dales Copper on the Beat has been incredibly well received, achieving 4.7 out of 5 stars from 44 customer reviews on Amazon.
Mike’s bestseller can be bought on Amazon and all good book shops, along with his other three books: Not on My Patch, Lad; Just the Job, Lad; and You’re Coming with Me Lad.
