A Sunday Times top-five bestseller

'This is a remarkable book . . . profound and deeply moving . . . It has as much to tell us about mental illness as it does about policing' Alastair Stewart

John Sutherland joined the Met in 1992, having dreamed of being a police officer since his teens. Rising quickly through the ranks, he experienced all that is extraordinary about a life in blue: saving lives, finding the lost, comforting the broken and helping to take dangerous people off the streets. But for every case with a happy ending, there were others that ended in desperate sadness, and in 2013 John suffered a major breakdown.

Blue is his memoir of crime and calamity, of adventure and achievement, of friendship and failure, of serious illness and slow recovery. With searing honesty, it offers an immensely moving and personal insight into what it is to be a police officer in Britain today.

"This courageous and finely written book is a timely invitation to think more deeply about what we ask of our police" - DAILY MAIL

"A stark account of a talented police officer's breakdown . . . This is a startlingly honest book and the final two chapters are heartbreaking" - THE TIMES

"Admirably honest and movingly human . . . Sutherland asks us to look behind the faceless blue and see the individual people" - SPECTATOR

"An honest look at the vulnerability that comes with bravery" - THE I

"The effect of this honesty is to leave us both more appreciative of police officers and more concerned for their well-being, as well as encouraged that such a compassionate man was promoted so vertiginously. [Sutherland] describes police work as "fulfilling, humbling, inspiring, daunting, shattering, rewarding and soul-stirring" which is also a fair description of his book" - TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

"John Sutherland lays out the human cost of working as a police officer in simple, devastating terms" - HUFFINGTON POST

"A gripping book . . . moving and really powerful . . . I highly recommend it" - BBC LONDON