Lacey Flint, Sharon Bolton’s enigmatic protagonist, has been living in a houseboat on the River Thames, and she’s becoming a part of London’s weird and wonderful riverboat community. Against her friends’ better judgment, she’s taken up swimming in the Thames, and she feels closer than ever to Detective Mark Joesbury, despite his involvement in a complicated undercover case. For the first time in her life, as she recovers from the trauma of the last few months, Lacey begins to feel almost happy.
Then, at dawn one hot summer morning while swimming down the river, Lacey finds the body of a shrouded young woman in the water. She assumes it was chance—after all, she's recently joined the marine policing unit, and she knows how many dead bodies are pulled out of the river every year, most the result of tragic accidents. But further investigation leads her policing team to suspect the woman’s body was deliberately left for Lacey to find. Lacey’s no longer a homicide detective, but as she begins to notice someone keeping a strangely close eye on her, she’s inexorably drawn into the investigation.
Award-winning author Sharon Bolton has once again crafted a tightly plotted, utterly unpredictable thriller around one of the most compelling characters in crime fiction today, intensely private London police officer Lacey Flint, whose penchant for keeping secrets is only matched by her determination to uncover those of others.
Then, at dawn one hot summer morning while swimming down the river, Lacey finds the body of a shrouded young woman in the water. She assumes it was chance—after all, she's recently joined the marine policing unit, and she knows how many dead bodies are pulled out of the river every year, most the result of tragic accidents. But further investigation leads her policing team to suspect the woman’s body was deliberately left for Lacey to find. Lacey’s no longer a homicide detective, but as she begins to notice someone keeping a strangely close eye on her, she’s inexorably drawn into the investigation.
Award-winning author Sharon Bolton has once again crafted a tightly plotted, utterly unpredictable thriller around one of the most compelling characters in crime fiction today, intensely private London police officer Lacey Flint, whose penchant for keeping secrets is only matched by her determination to uncover those of others.
When a dispute among the Fellows of St. Severin's College, Oxford University, reaches a stalemate, Lord Peter Wimsey discovers that as the Duke of Denver he is "the Visitor"—charged with the task of resolving the issue. It is time for Lord Peter and his detective novelist wife, Harriet, to revisit their beloved Oxford, where their long and literate courtship finally culminated in their engagement and marriage.
At first, the dispute seems a simple difference of opinion about a valuable manuscript that some of the Fellows regard as nothing but an insurance liability, which should be sold to finance a speculative purchase of land. The voting is evenly balanced. The Warden would normally cast the deciding vote, but he has disappeared. And when several of the Fellows unexpectedly die as well, Lord Peter and Harriet set off on an investigation to uncover what is really going on at St. Severin's.
With this return in The Late Scholar to the Oxford of Gaudy Night, which many readers regard as their favorite of Sayers's original series, Jill Paton Walsh at once revives the wit and brilliant plotting of the Golden Age of detective fiction.
At first, the dispute seems a simple difference of opinion about a valuable manuscript that some of the Fellows regard as nothing but an insurance liability, which should be sold to finance a speculative purchase of land. The voting is evenly balanced. The Warden would normally cast the deciding vote, but he has disappeared. And when several of the Fellows unexpectedly die as well, Lord Peter and Harriet set off on an investigation to uncover what is really going on at St. Severin's.
With this return in The Late Scholar to the Oxford of Gaudy Night, which many readers regard as their favorite of Sayers's original series, Jill Paton Walsh at once revives the wit and brilliant plotting of the Golden Age of detective fiction.
The city of Grifonia, Italy, is swarming with secrets—thousands of years of dark, murderous secrets.
Taz, a British student who has just arrived for her year abroad, thinks that she will spend her time in Italy sipping wine and taking in the rolling Umbrian hills. But she soon falls in with a cabal of posh, reckless girls—the B4—who turn her quaint fantasies into an erotic and dangerous rush through the darkest realms of friendship and love. Abroad is a chilling parable of modern girlhood from an author who “from her opening line . . . grabs you and never lets go” (People).
Not since Donna Tartt’s The Secret History have we been treated to such an addictive tale of tumultuous adolescence. We see Taz scared and alone, but hungry for new experience and piqued by the thrill of living abroad. We see her roommate, the plainspoken American Claire, who worries about Taz’s motives and expresses sincere concern for her safety—but everything changes when they fall for the same man.
And then there’s what we don’t see—the perils that lurk around the corner. We don’t see the secrets that friends—and lovers—keep from one another. And we don’t see the force that is bigger than Taz, bigger than her friends and loves, a force that seems to be propelling them all toward a dark, awful end.
Inspired by real events but tackled with grace and sharpness by a master storyteller, this is Katie Crouch at her finest.
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