Page Updated: 08/09/2004

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Gillian Linscott - Page 2

Dance On Blood Dead Man's Music Widow's Peak Sister Beneath the Sheet Murder, I Presume

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Dance On Blood
Nell Bray would do almost anything to get the vote, but planting a bomb in a house belonging to David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, is where she draws the line. Her friends have other ideas and, in trying to head them off, Nell becomes a leading suspect. But Lloyd George offers her a deal - he will drop all charges if she recovers some politically embarrassing letters from a mysterious barefoot dancer. Nell is in no position to refuse. To make matters worse, there's a spy near the heart of the suffragette movement, and something must be done about it before disaster strikes what she cares about most.
'Linscott writes like a rewarding angel' Sunday Times

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Paperback - Virago (1997)

Dead Man's Music
Nell Bray is spending a few weeks with her brother's family in the Pennine Moors. She is here on holiday but, breathing in the good clean air, she detects a whiff of mystery. A mystery surrounding the murder of Osbert Newbiggin, squire of neighbouring Crowberry Hall, musical expert and pillar of the community. A mystery that most people think has been solved already. Davie Kendal, the dead man's protege, has been tried, found guilty, and is currently in gaol awaiting the death sentence. But Davie's barrister, Bill Musgrave, believes in his innocence and will stop at nothing to recruit Nell to his cause.
As Nell delves deep into the mystery she finds that the lives of both the dead man and his alleged killer were more complicated than they seemed. But time is running out and Davie will be executed in less than a week unless Nell can find concrete proof of his innocence.
Published as "Dead Man's Sweetheart" in the United States
'A sharp eye for high and low society and absurdly readable' Daily Telegraph
'Another firm vote for unquenchable Nell.' Sunday Times
'Engaging... lively writing, nice period touches.' Observer
'A sharp eye for high and low society and absurdly readable.' Daily Telegraph

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First British Edition Little,Brown (1994)

Widow's Peak
Summer in Chamonix, 1910 - a popular rendezvous for adventurous young Englishmen, sampling the pleasures of a little light mountaineering in the shadows of Mont Blanc, while their womenfolk peruse the cafes and boutiques of a blossoming tourist town. For Nell Fray and her friends it is an opportunity to improve their climbing skills, venturing above the snowline into the wilder regions of bergschrund and glacier, hitching up skirts, roping up and crossing crevasses on rickety wooden ladders.
During one such excursion the feisty Nell chances upon a curious scene - a group of Chamonix mountain guides chipping away at the glacier in order to remove a corpse, frozen in the mountain's chilly embrace. The inexorable but painfully slow descent of the glacier down the valley means that the body of Arthur Mordiford, missing presumed dead in 1880, is only now being offered up by the mountain for burial: an apparently neat, if a little tardy, solution to a thirty-year-old mystery.
However, Arthur's death may not have been as straightforward as the evidence seems to suggest, as Nell begins to realise when she agrees to act as interpreter for his family, recently arrived in Chamonix to arrange the body's return to England. Her suspicions mount as she witnesses the family's increasingly strange behaviour: why is Arthur's brother, who was present the day he died, so keen to have the body taken home? Why were they invited to stay at Mme Martin's, widow of the guide who perished with Arthur! And just what exactly happened that fateful day?
The mountains maintain an impassive silence, so the resourceful Nell, flying as ever in the face of convention, decides to investigate. As the story unfolds, her powers of detection are tested to the limit, in what is surely her most devious and perplexing case to date ...
Published as "An Easy Day for a Lady" in the United States

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Hardback Null ()

Sister Beneath the Sheet
It is springtime in Biarritz - and playtime for Edwardian society. But that fast and fashionable world is suddenly shaken by the death of a high-class prostitute - and by the extraordinary contents of her will. Topaz Brown, hostess to royalty, rakes and roués, has left her considerable fortune to the suffragette movement.
Nell Bray, committed suffragette but no stranger to society, is sent to Biarritz by Emmeline Pankhurst with instructions to claim the money while keeping its embarrassing source obscure. But on arrival she becomes embroiled in a mystery surrounding Topaz's death. Did she commit suicide or was she murdered? Nell finds herself cast in the role of detective - an ironic occupation for someone who has just come out of Holloway prison after serving time for throwing a brick through the window of No 10 Downing Street.
Determined to discover the truth, Nell pursues her investigations through the tawdry slums and the elegant boulevards of Biarritz, to a circus, to an indiscreet doctor and to an exotic soiree at the villa of Topaz's rival. But all the while her task is hampered by the antics of fellow suffragette Bobbie Fieldfare who is bent on a mission of her own. With a gun in her travelling bag, she is stalking David Chester MP, barrister and suffragette-hater, who was instrumental in Nell's recent incarceration.
Set against the glittering backdrop of Biarritz in its heyday, Sister Beneath the Sheet contains the classical elements of a whodunnit, a host of original characters and some highly amusing set-pieces. The result is a heady cocktail of crime with a dash of comedy that will enthral and surprise the most avid crime addict.
Critical acclaim for Gillian Linscott:
'Splendid… a neat surprise ending and irresistible period style' Matthew Coady, Guardian
'Excellent… a witty and original story set in the fashionable London of 1874' Sunday Express
'Unusual, well-crafted and very satisfying' Sunday Telegraph
'The writing is a sheer delight… great fun' Yorkshire Post
'Absurdly enjoyable' Financial Times

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First British Edition Macmillan (1990)

Murder, I Presume
It is 1874, and fashionable London is flocking to pay its last respects to the late Dr Livingstone. Africa, with many of its riches and mysteries still unexplored, holds a potent magic and feelings run high. Two women, strong-minded Maud Stretton and beautiful Cecilia Bright, meet and quarrel over Livingstone's coffin as their husbands prepare to lead rival expeditions back to Africa. Reputations are at stake, in a world where reputation means more than life itself.
But when death strikes it takes an unexpected form, not in Africa but on a rainy night in a Westminster mission hall. The victim, a notorious coward and disgraced explorer, claims to know something that would convict one of the rival expedition leaders of behaviour unbecoming an English gentleman. He dies on a public platform, seconds away from uttering his secret. The inquest jury's verdict is murder - and the poison that killed him came from Africa.
Gossip, then worse than gossip, threatens Maud, Cecilia and all around them. One man, Peter Pentland, has a particular reason for wanting to discover the truth - he promised both Stretton and Bright that he'd look after their wives. That promise takes him limping along more dangerous paths than anything in Africa.
Gillian Linscott vividly recreates London and Africa at the height of Queen Victoria's empire, in a mystery with a difference.
Critical acclaim for Gillian Linscott:
'A well-balanced cross between traditional detectivism and off-beat comedy of manners - the book is totally original in form, setting and style' the Oxford Times
'Wittily written, with an original background and pleasingly odd characters.' T.J.Binyon, Times Literary Supplement
'A typical English mystery novel, well-crafted, not very violent in word or deed.' Anthony Lejeune, The Daily Telegraph

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