Cath Staincliffe at Tangled Web UK

Page Updated: 09/07/2007

Page 1

Page 2

Cath Staincliffe - Page 2

First British Edition Allison & Busby (2002)

Towers Of Silence
See Review by Martin Edwards - creator of the highly acclaimed, Liverpool based Harry Devlin Mysteries
It’s the count down to Christmas and Sal Kilkenny is exhausted even just thinking about the festive season - the tree, presents for the kids, who to invite and what to have for Christmas dinner. So when she is asked to investigate a suicide that a grieving family cannot come to terms with, she turns the case down. Miriam Johnstone had a history of mental instability and the coroner’s verdict seemed justified. But eventually persuaded, against her better judgement, to help the family trace their mothers’ last hours, Sal is ashamed to realise how little the authorities had bothered to investigate and starts to have her own suspicions about the death. Why would a woman so petrified of heights choose to jump from the top of Manchester’s Arndale Centre car park?
While Sal tracks down Miriam’s friends and acquaintances, she also has a personal dilemma on her hands. When should she introduce her daughter Maddie to her new boyfriend, Stuart? The responsibility of being a single mum is preying on her mind when she receives a call from a woman desperate to get some answers about her own child. With mixed feelings, Sal agrees to tail the difficult teenager and discover where he goes and what he does. The results are puzzling and before long she is led in unexpected directions that will take her closer to danger and heartbreak than ever before...
Written with beautiful attention to the nuances of everyday life, Towers of Silence is an emotionally involving journey into the heart of a city hiding dark secrets.
Acclaim for Cath Staincliffe’s Sal Kilkenny novels
'Uncommonly engaging… zestful and involving… A writer with wit, energy and a point of view. Stand back and watch her go' Literary Review
`Real people, real problems ... Staincliffe writes brilliantly and compassionately about the things that matter.’ Literary Review
`Cath Staincliffe is a writer who understands that events have consequences that reverberate throughout people’s lives, and she never shies way from the difficult answers. A must for anyone who wants to understand the beating heart of contemporary Mancunian life.’ Val McDermid, Manchester Evening News
`As good as the British private-eye novel gets’ Time Out

First British Edition Allison & Busby (2001)

Paperback - Allison & Busby (2002)

Stone Cold Red Hot
See Review by Martin Edwards - creator of the highly acclaimed, Liverpool based Harry Devlin Mysteries
When private eye Sal Kilkenny is asked to discover the whereabouts of Jennifer Pickering, disinherited by her family twenty years ago, it seems that Jennifer does not want to be found. Her brother Roger is determined to find his sister- their mother is dying and he craves an emotional reunion to bury their differences before it is too late. Despite her initial reservations, as the events of the past gradually unfold, single-mum Sal finds that she is becoming engrossed in the mystery even against her better judgement.
There are dark secrets waiting to be uncovered but can Sal break the conspiracy of silence that surrounds this case?
As she spends her days tracing Jennifer, Sal’s nights become shattered by an emotional and often dangerous assignment on one of Manchester’s toughest housing estates. In this highly charged atmosphere of racial tension it is not surprising when tempers flare. These two cases collide when events, past and present, spiral out of control...

Paperback - Headline (1999)

First British Edition Headline (1998)

Dead Wrong
Sal Kilkenny, single mother and private eye, has two very frightened clients on her hands. One, divorcee Debbie Gosforth, is the victim of a deranged stalker; the other, teenager Luke Wallace, is afraid he might be a murderer. Both are likeable, vulnerable but frustratingly unreliable - Debbie through blind fear, Luke because he simply cannot remember the night when, off his head on a cocktail of Ecstacy and alcohol, he is alleged to have stabbed his best friend Ahktar Khan to death.
But as Sal sets about finding the identity of the stalker who's making Debbie's life a living hell, the city goes up in smoke. The IRA bomb the Arndale Centre and, against a backdrop of Euro 96 and Oasis, a summer of terror begins. And as she unearths disturbing new shreds of evidence about Ahktar's death, Sal finds herself and her family in a much more personal firing line…
'A fast, witty novel with a rip-roaring finale' Gwen Moffat, Shots
"Has her finger on the pulse of her city [and] that rare ability to write about love, motherhood and friendship without sentimentality. She paints a picture of Manchester that its inhabitants recognise only too well." Val McDermid, Manchester Evening News, 12.10.98
"Remarkable for its keen sense of actuality (on her way into Manchester to meet a client, Sal's appointment is blown away by the IRA bombing of the Arndale Centre), and warmed by its affection for family and friends. Compassionate, exciting, and down-to-earth. Infused also with that rare and precious ingredient: true feeling." Philip Oakes, Literary Review, December 1998

First British Edition Headline (1997)

Go Not Gently
See Review by Val McDermid - Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill
Juggling the school run with assignments tailing cheating husbands makes life a strange mixture of the dramatic and the domestic for Sal Kilkenny, private investigator and single mother. And when van driver Jimmy Achebe, distraught at his wife's apparent infidelity, asks Sal to confirm his fears, only to find himself a widower shortly afterwards, she suspects the dramatic may be about to take the upper hand.
But it is another of her cases, investigating the sudden decline into Alzheimer's Disease of Lily Palmer, an elderly woman resident of Homelea Nursing Home, that claims more of her attention. For although they both know she may be attempting to find answers to the unanswerable, Sal feels that she should try to give her client Agnes Donlan as much peace of mind over the reasons behind her friend's pitiful state as she can. When Agnes witnesses a violent dare-up between Lily's doctor and Homelea's matron, and a rapidly worsening Lily is miraculously found a bed in South Manchester's oversubscribed psycho-geriatric hospital, Sal begins to wonder whether there may be real grounds for Agnes's unease about her friend's treatment after all.
Gritty, intelligent, humane and involving, GO NOT GENTLY features a highly believable heroine rooted in a vivid and convincing Manchester background and is an outstanding follow-up to Cath Staincliffe's acclaimed debut LOOKING FOR TROUBLE, nominated for the Crime Writers' Association Best First Crime Novel Award.
'.. A superb follow up to Cath Staincliffe's highly acclaimed debut' Peterborough Weekend Telegraph
'Struggling single mother Sal Kilkenny is compassionate, gutsy, bright enough to know when it's clever to be scared and tenacious as a Rottweiler. Cath Staincliffe's tour of the mean streets and leafy suburbs of Manchester reveals the city as the natural successor to Marlowe's Los Angeles' Val McDermid
'Uncommonly engaging and celebrating a lifestyle in which battles with the budget are just as stressful as punch-ups with the baddies. Not what you'd call escapist, but zestful and involving.' Philip Oakes, Literary Review
'Gritty, intelligent, humane and involving… a highly-believable heroine rooted in a vivid and convincing Manchester background in this novel and entertaining book.' The Big Issue In the North
'Warm, compassionate and engrossing… One to watch out for' Yorkshire Post
'No nonsense and thoroughly likeable… combines gritty realism with a clever plot… Recommended' What's On, Birmingham
'Warm, compassionate and engrossing… Staincliffe lifts the lid on issues such as mental health and abuse of the elderly in a realistic manner. Highly believable and a wonderful twist at the end.' Yorkshire Post
'The snappy first person narrative delves into the dark sinister side of medicine in this gritty and involving yarn… Go not Gently is well worth reading.' Bradford Telegraph and Argus

British Pbk Original - Crocus Books

Looking For Trouble
Short-listed for the Crime Writers Association John Creasey Award and serialised on Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 4
She's a single parent. A private eye. And liking it. Until, that is, Mrs. Hobbs turns up asking Sal Kilkenny to find her missing son.. Sal's search takes her through the Manchester underworld, a world of deprivation and petty theft, of well-heeled organised crime and ultimately, murder. Would she have taken the job on if she had known what she was getting into? Probably, because Sal is fired with the desire to see justice done, to avenge the death of a young lad whose only crime was knowing too much...
"Struggling single mother Sal Kilkenny is compassionate, gutsy, bright enough to know when it's clever to be scared and tenacious as a Rottweiler. Cath Staincliffe's tour of the mean streets and leafy suburbs of Manchester reveals the city as the natural successor to Marlowe's Los Angeles. With a cast of characters drawn from the gutter to the high ranks of business and officialdom, she probes the city's underbelly in an exciting tale of corruption, exploitation and brutality." Val McDermid
"Sal Kilkenny manages a fine juggling act with a horribly messy case and a hectic home life." Liza Cody
"Ms. Staincliffe writes exceptionally well." Marcia Muller
"an instantly attractive heroine" A Shot In The Dark
"credible and involving, with corruption paving the mean streets of Manchester" Literary Review
"an excellent thriller" The Big Issue
"one to watch out for" Yorkshire Post
"gutsy, unconvoluted prose.. an original thriller whose protagonist is no-nonsense and thoroughly likeable… combines gritty realism with a clever plot… Recommended" Birmingham Post
"A direct and gripping debut" Paint it Red
"a complex modern mix of single parenthood, warmly and realistically portrayed" A Shot In the Dark
"a writer with energy, wit and a point of view. Stand back and watch her go" Literary Review