Page Updated: 18/07/2006

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Gwen Moffat - Page 2

Running Dogs A Wreath of Dead Moths The Lost Girls Cue the Battered Wife The Outside Edge

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First British Edition Severn House (1999)

Running Dogs
The gap between rich and poor is nowhere more obvious than in the settlement of Prosper on the rugged coast of Washington state. In their fine houses facing the Pacific the affluent inhabitants party carelessly in the afterglow while back in the forest the remnants of a former logging colony plot how they may improve their circumstances. After prostitution crime is the only solution, and crime escalates from petty theft to blackmail. A disturbing situation is rendered fraught by a pack of dogs running loose in the forest: killers of deer, pets, and - who knows - of people. Folk in Prosper arm themselves. The local hooker seizes on the temporary absence of her brutal husband to fraternise with the owner of the sleazy bar at Angel's Camp. And here the retired colonel from Prosper walks in to buy a Jaguar and enters a simple trap that will culminate in a number of violent and very nasty deaths.

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First British Edition Severn House (1998)

A Wreath of Dead Moths
'Someone was on that hill ahead of the rescuers …'
Journalist Kate Munro specialises in accounts of sensational mountain rescues, so when the subject of Ben Torboll comes up, she jumps at it.
Scene of a tragic plane crash forty years earlier in which all aboard - US servicemen flying home after the war - were killed, the close-knit Scottish community still remembers that day. Still stands by its local heroes - climber Neil Grant in particular - who went up into the mountains to try and save lives. Apparently too late.
Officially there were no survivors, but local gossip tells of a mysterious figure who got to the wreckage before the rescuers. Someone who may have seen something ... taken something ... and made sure there were no witnesses left behind.
Suddenly this is no longer a straightforward assignment. Kate needs to know the real story. But who can she trust - especially when her investigation triggers a series of violent deaths? Following clues to Montana and Arizona, out of her depth and increasingly afraid, Kate knows someone has anticipated her every move: key witnesses are silenced; valuable evidence is missing.
Whoever it is clearly wants the past kept dead and buried, and will stop at nothing - even murder - to achieve it.

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First British Edition Constable (1998)

The Lost Girls
When a lakeland dale is flooded to form a reservoir there are no protests, only relief. The rising water should cover the remains of little Joannie Gardner, and folk can forget both the child and the man who left the dale shortly after her disappearance.
Forty-five years on memories come surging back as the water recedes in a prolonged drought and another lost girl stumbles into the dale. Perry, a street kid on the run, has one friend: a fat collie with a liking for bones. A careless drifter, Perry sees herself as a survivor, but in the market town of Kelleth, where the displaced villagers have ended up, a killer stalks its passages and walled yards.
But, if Perry is the perceived victim, it is travel writer and amateur sleuth Melinda Pink who is the ultimate threat.
In her seventies now, Miss Pink is still active but increasingly politically incorrect, employing innuendo and entrapment where the local CID is hamstrung by PACE. Moreover she understands remote communities. So when the dog's ghastly find at the drowned village revives the events and rumours surrounding Joannie's disappearance nearly half a century earlier - and then another violent death occurs - it is Miss Pink who makes the connections to reveal more horrors than had ever been suspected. The ending is satisfying: revelation, explanation - and conflagration.
Rage
'A superbly plotted puzzle is carefully unravelled.' Sue Wood, Oxford Mail 'Gwen Moffat creates vivid characters, and not only manages a fast-moving, well-patterned plot, but shows an aptitude for brilliant atmospheric set-pieces.' The Mail
'An exciting tale, picked out with the deft skill of a quilt-maker, in which Gwen Moffat creates a rather beautiful landscape full of rather foul deeds.' Ed Perkins, Southern Evening Echo
v 'A fusion of genres, the western and the detective.' Patricia Craig, Times Literary Supplement
Snare
'A tall tale, expertly told, rising to chill heights of wanton evil and quietly disquieting private justice delivered, as it were, on a plateau at the close.' John Coleman, Sunday Times
Last Chance Country
'Rarely has the mysterious quiet and extreme solitude of the strange rugged American Southwest been better portrayed.' Glasgow Herald
Hard Road West
'The sense of time, space and wilderness is admirably, sometimes piercingly conveyed.' Anthony Burgess, Observer

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First British Edition Macmillan (1994)

Cue the Battered Wife
'Eve woke with a start. "Go back to that slide of the adult bird." She sat up, suddenly interested. The image was a classic scene - but it wasn't the birds that alerted Eva "That's a hand!" she cried.'
Vivien Reid's life is transformed the day she meets Rupert Lasco. A celebrated mountaineer and travel writer, she has been used to calling the shots - until the day her -publisher decides to drop her from the list. Rupert persuades her that fighting back is the only answer. A former editor himself, he offers to help her start a new career - as a crime novelist.
At Vivien's home in the wilds of Scotland, -however, her staff welcome Rupert warily. But no one's antagonism can match that of Vivien's neighbour and former climbing partner, Alastair Semple. And when Rupert and Vivien marry, Alastair's resentment turns to venomous obsession.
Tensions mount between the Lasco and Semple households to explode on a night of impending storm. The inhabitants of the remote community wake to the beauty of the Highlands under snow - and the awareness that one of their number is missing. With threats and cunning the cover-up starts. People conceal the truth from the police -and even from each other - until a bird-watcher photographing eagles feeding their young unwittingly records evidence of a savage death. Up till then had it been the perfect murder?

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First British Edition Macmillan (1993)

The Outside Edge
To the casual observer Scawdale in the English Lake District, is a delightful place. There is the tranquil lake, spectacular fells buttressed by steep rock - and a pair of peregrines have nested on Falcon Crag. But the whitewashed cottages of Scawdale conceal sombre activities.
Jack Pharaoh, invalided out of Mountain Rescue, is thinking of settling in the dale and he approaches landowner Randolph Steel with a view to renting one of his properties. Soon Pharaoh is made aware of the bitter conflicts of a divided community fighting for survival, and inevitably he becomes involved. There are two camps in the dale, one paring its lifestyle to the bone - like Miss Cooper, subsisting on stinging nettles and the rabbits her cats bring home - the other surviving by exploitation. Deer are poached, the falcons' nest is robbed, Miss Cooper's cats are threatened. Prostitution and pimping imply abuse and violence while up in their secret cave on Falcon Crag two little girls keep a close watch on proceedings in happy ignorance that others are out there watching too. Disaster strikes with the disappearance of one of the most vulnerable of the dale's inhabitants and Pharaoh's relationship with her makes him a prime suspect. The threat of arrest forces Pharaoh to follow his own line of investigation and in doing so he witnesses the clash between two of the most ruthless and amoral opponents the dale has ever known -and uncovers a hitherto unsuspected crime...
'Cool, incisive tale of collusive amorality - from one of the crime shelf's defter hands.' Matthew Coady, Guardian

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