An Urge for Justice

by John Wainwright

In a small village in the north of England, an elderly woman is brutally hanged with piano wire, and a detective’s hunt for the killer uncovers, instead, the shocking double – and triple – identify of the victim. Now, assassin and murdered imposter, connected by horrors long buried with the ashes of World War II, present an agonizing present-day is not punishment at all, perhaps, the one that fits the crime? Sombre and powerful, ‘An Urge for Justice’ does not shy away from exposing past and present wickedness. Dark ghosts haunt the book until the final pages, where an astonishing, terrible truth is finally brought to light. John Wainwright, master of the police procedural, proves once again that as Newsday said, he is “one of the best in the business.” ‘An Urge for Justice’ is perhaps his most gripping, psychologically brilliant novel to date. Book Dust Jacket

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

aka Jack Ripley

John William Wainwright was a rear gunner in World War II, after which he spent twenty years as a policeman in Yorkshire. He wrote eighty crime novels between 1965 and 1992, sometimes under the pseudonym 'Jack Ripley'. He also wrote some short stories (mostly uncollected in book format), 7 radio plays, and an indefinite amount of magazine articles and newspaper columns.