The First Time Ever

Ted Darling is a Specialist Firearms Officer, and a good one, with a promising career in front of him. Then he meets someone who could change everything but who can’t live with his police role.

Ted’s wanted to be a copper since he was nine. Can he find a new opening within the force which is his surrogate family?

Despite being trained to shoot to kill, Ted’s good with people. They like him, they trust him, so they talk to him. His skills get him noticed and he’s seconded to help with a big CID operation. It isn’t long before he’s facing his first murder case as a member of the Serious Crime team.

His new boss in CID, DCI ‘Big Jim’ Baker, is notoriously hard to please and battling demons of his own away from work, which is making him even harder to work with. In trying to help him, Ted goes out on a limb with an uncharacteristic action which could potentially land him in serious trouble, as well as costing him his new role.

It’s only the outstanding success of the operation which saves his skin and gets him a rare second chance from Big Jim, and the prospect of a promotion to Detective Inspector, as long as he treads carefully in the future.

Has he made the right choice in switching jobs? Or is he, as his Firearms boss warns him, about to commit career suicide?