‘Why not join the Metropolitan Police?’ A chance glance at the large poster pinned to a noticeboard outside Wembley Police Station in 1964 changed Carol Bristow’s life. Aged twenty-two, with eight dead-end jobs behind her, she knew there must be a world beyond the typewriter. Little did she know what the next thirty years would hold.

Proud in her blue serge uniform, Carol was all set to take the police force by storm. From her early days as a rookie, she was involved in dangerous and often hilarious cases dealing with the prostitutes, runaways and pickpockets of the swinging West End of London.

But being a simple WPC was never enough for Carol. Against all advice, she signed up to join the CID, one of the last male bastions, where many officers had never worked alongside a woman before. From then on, her career became a veritable roller coaster ride. Using her call sign “Central 822”, she rose through the ranks and became the first woman detective sergeant on the Flying Squad, to be trained as a firearms officer, and later a detective inspector on the Drugs Squad.

All life’s experiences awaited her, including a celebrated encounter with the artist Francis Bacon, a terrifying moment in the sights of an Arab terrorist’s rifle, and some unusual adventures with the sex dens and drugs barons of London. But the core of her work, for which she acquired an unequalled reputation, involved the detection of rape. Carol dealt with innumerable allegations of serious sexual assault, interviewing many of the shattered victims herself – a job which took a personal toll. She dealt with the Ealing Vicarage Rape, set up the first Sexual Assault Unit in the Met and became the unofficial police spokeswoman on sexual offenders.

One case, above all, came to haunt her: the rape and murder of the beautiful Australian heiress Janie Shepherd, by a man whose campaign of violence had run parallel with Carol’s police career. As her early retirement through injury loomed, she was determined to see justice done for the young woman who epitomised all the rape victims she had ever known.

Central 822 is a powerful testimony to an extraordinary life working with extraordinary people, an autobiography of a woman who joined the police force by chance and then worked tirelessly in her battle against crime. Serialised on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour Book of the Week.