Biteback signs 'damning indictment' of the Met Police from Harper

Biteback Publishing has signed investigative journalist Tom Harper’s "searing insight" into the Metropolitan Police in Broken Yard.

Editorial director Olivia Beattie acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Martin Redfern at Northbank Talent Management. Audio rights have been acquired by Jodie Coles at W F Howes. The book was signed by Picador last year but subsequently re-offered to publishers. Broken Yard: The Fall of the Metropolitan Police will be released by Biteback on 13th September with a "major" publicity campaign. 

Harper covered Scotland Yard for 15 years as a reporter at the Sunday Times and the Independent. His book compiles his knowledge in a "devastating picture of a world-famous police force riven with corruption, misogyny and rank incompetence", spanning three decades from the murder of Stephen Lawrence to the murder of Sarah Everard. 

Harper commented: "The new Met commissioner, Mark Rowley, has perhaps the most difficult job in Britain. Scotland Yard has become Broken Yard. Gripped by scandal, buffeted by budget cuts and grappling with soaring crime levels, the Metropolitan Police has lost so much trust with the public that it was recently put into special measures. How did this happen? What went wrong? And what can it do to restore its once fearsome reputation? I hope this book may provide answers to these important questions and I am thrilled to be publishing Broken Yard with Olivia Beattie and her team at Biteback." 

"Barely a day goes by without new evidence of staggering police wrongdoing," Beattie added. "But even for those who consider themselves fully versed in the dishonesty, misogyny and code of omertà practised within the Met, Tom’s revelatory book still has the power to shock. With its forensic, clear-eyed research, this is a damning indictment of the force and an exceptional work of investigative journalism."