Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23914 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-19
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 384 pages

Synopsis
A young woman walks home by herself, the tapping of her high heels the only sound. At two o' clock in the morning, it's cold, the streets are deserted and she thinks she's all alone. Waiting for her, sleeping soundly in his bed, is her baby son. When he wakes the next morning his mother still isn't back. She's never coming back. Because the streets weren't as deserted as she thought. Three women are dead and Detective Inspector Lorraine Hunt is searching for a serial killer. In Houghton-le-Spring, it's Feast week, a time when all hell is let loose as the fair comes to town, and a frenzy of celebration and decadence provides a temporary distraction from the grim realities of everyday life.

From the Publisher
THE UNPUTDOWNABLE NEW NOVEL FROM THE AUTHOR OF RUN FOR HOME

From the Back Cover
A young woman walks home by herself, the tapping of her high heels the only sound. At two o'clock in the morning, it's cold, the streets are deserted, and she thinks she's all alone. Waiting for her, sleeping soundly in his bed, is her baby son. When he wakes the next morning his mother still isn't back. She's never coming back. Because the streets weren't as deserted as she'd thought.

Three women are dead, and Detective Inspector Lorraine Hunt is searching for a serial killer. In Houghton-le-Spring it's Feast week, a time when all hell is let loose as the fair comes to town, and a frenzy of celebration and decadence provides a temporary distraction from the grim realities of everyday life. It's not a good time to be searching for a stranger. It's not a good time to be a woman alone …

Praise for Sheila Quigley

'A convincing portrayal of a violent underworld' Independent

'A rattling good plot... it doesn't stop running until the final page by which time you will be breathless' Newcastle Upon Tyne Journal

Customer Reviews

A Real Page Turner
I picked up this book in the Airport on the way to USA and found it to be a real page turner. The author cleverly intertwines two plots together and throws in the personal life of the principal character. The only reason this fails to get 5 stars is the annoying habit the author has adopted of writing "your" as "yer". We know the action is set in Geardieland and the attempt to write in pseudodialect is unnecessary and distracting. Nevertheless I shall be looking for more from her.

gritty again
The second book in Sheila Quigley's series and it follows pretty much the same path as her first, 'Run For Home'. Her stories are a cross between Martina Cole's excellent East Enders coupled with a schoolgirl's comic book with bubble-talk. By this I mean that the detection work set amongst the characters of a North Eastern 'council estate' flows grippingly as Inspector Lorraine Hunt and her small team try to solve an increasing number of murders. But, for me, this is downgraded by the almost schoolgirl-like reactions of Hunt as she reflects on her chances with her black colleague, Luke.

When I set this aside and maybe skip a couple of paragraphs, I find another body has turned up - this time in the church tower. Now how did that get there? Quigley has a habit of dropping serious information at your feet without any preamble.

Having criticised the format, I have to say I do enjoy her storylines.

Her books are easy to read and you do want to turn the page to see how it pans out. I had her killer in mind from an early point but so much seems to go on in and around this estate in Houghton-le-Spring that I began to think I was misreading the characters.

As I stated in my first review, I already have her third book, 'Living On A Prayer' and, indeed, dived straight into after this one. I wanted to make sure I started just in case Quigley ran out of people to kill off. Midsommer Murders has nothing on Houghton, I can tell you, so hurry out and buy the book!

Bad Moon Rising? - Just Plain Bad
This is truly the worst book I have ever read. In the first few chapter the reader is hit with a barrage of characters. I counted 7 new names across 2 pages at one point, half of them only to be mentioned once or twice again. Why?

The plot was predictable - it was obvious who took the girl. The capture of the killer seemed to come out of nowhere. There was no build-up, no suspense and at the end of it I really didn't care who the killer was, I only wish they'd managed to see off a few more of these cheesy and cliched characters.

And what is wrong with writing 'you' rather than 'yer'. We all know what a geordie accent sounds like, credit the reader with some intelligence (or perhaps not given some of the rave reviews this book has received).