Page Updated: 18/07/2006

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Gwen Moffat - Page 3

Veronica's Sisters Pit Bull Persons Unknown 01 Jul 06 Over the Sea to Death 01 Jul 06 Miss Pink at the Edge of the World

---

First British Edition Macmillan (1992)

Veronica's Sisters
Exploring a remote canyon in the wilds of New Mexico Melinda Pink comes upon a rifle and recent human remains in an old cave dwelling.
Someone in the area must be waiting for a body to be found, so Miss Pink alerts the small community of Regis and the police, only to find that no one is missing. There was a recent suicide when the lovely but disturbed Veronica walked into the river and a Mexican ranch hand made a discreet departure after the autopsy showed she was pregnant - but that could have nothing to do with Miss Pink's grisly discovery. Or could it?
Miss Pink is intrigued, especially as she knows that rural America can be a dangerous -and unforgiving place. And soon she exposes dark secrets and darker suspicions: drugs, an old cabin haunted by snakes and memories of clandestine meetings, brothel-keeping, the English maid who nursed the wife and married the widower ... As she continues her investigations Miss Pink makes connections here, is stonewalled there; a twelve-year-old disappears, but apparently of her own volition, and keeps running, even from people determined to protect her. So what or who - is she running from? A sensational storm is the setting for a third death and the body is borne away on the flood waters of the Rio Grande, just like Veronica. The end is quiet and terrible, and culminates in Miss Pink's entry into that circle of women, Veronica's sisters, to join them in a conspiracy of silence . .
'In Veronica's Sisters the indomitable Melinda Pink is in New Mexico. Moffat conveys tangibly the all-consuming heat, the strange geological features, the menace of rattlesnakes and flash floods which on the one hand weld the community together and, on the other, foster eccentricities and aversions. Far from being an extraneous element, the physical setting virtually creates the criminals and the crimes. This book is irresistible.' FINANCIAL TIMES

---

First British Edition Macmillan (1991)

Pit Bull
In the Cumbrian hamlet of Clouds most of the inhabitants live in a state of near-poverty. The Rankins farm poor land, Juno Dolphin struggles to prepare her old house for Bed and Breakfast, while young Susan Shaw rents a tiny cottage and depends on the support of Clem Harker during her mercenary husband's extended absences abroad.
Harker is a retired airman; staying with him during the long hot summer is his friend Jack Pharaoh, recently discharged from RAF Mountain Rescue after a bad fall. Then another visitor descends on Clouds, Susan's husband Martin, and he soon takes exception to her neighbours, the Rankins. For their son Paul owns a pit bull - a vicious animal trained for illegal dog-fights - and boasts that it is capable of ripping a man to pieces.
Tensions explode as Shaw rises to Paul's taunts, and when the pit bull disappears during a storm an armed search is mounted to capture the animal. But further panic ensues when the boy fails to return and tragedy engulfs the hamlet after his body is discovered a few miles from Clouds. Only Pharaoh refuses to accept the Coroner's verdict of accidental death, but, when he decides to investigate what really happened and why, his decision takes him to the brink of danger, as a second violent death forces him to confront unspeakable savagery and retribution...
'All Gwen Moffat's skills with solitary people, lonely passions, mysterious deaths and fine landscapes are displayed in strength.' Mail On Sunday
'Top marks for topicality as eponymous canine and thuggish owner menace rural Cumbrian neighbours with lethal results... parallel between animal and human killer sharply made. Recommended reading for Home Office. Strong stomachs an advantage.' Guardian
'Played out against a rugged landscape, this is guaranteed to keep the old snout glued to the page.' Daily Express

---

Persons Unknown
On the wild Welsh coast Roderick Bowen has just won a battle against siting a nuclear power plant on his land, and Miss Pink comes to celebrate the victory and his 88th birthday. But the threat of compulsory purchase is still there and the land is worth a bomb. “Over my dead body” says Roderick - and promptly falls down the granary steps: pushed, he says, but by whom? His recuperation is enlivened by a telephone flirtation with a seductive London call girl. Holed up in one of his cottages with her minder she is about to publish a book that will bring down the government.
Prowling the village and the dangerous manganese mine is the ghastly delinquent, Jakey Jones, who has his eye on Caithness, the small kitten living with Samuel Honey, an ex-fighter pilot who has a killing eye on Jakey.
The plot connects them all: young and old villains and their victims. At the end Miss Pink is left wondering if some other and alien force has been at work as the sun burns off the fog around the prehistoric settlement and one who is afraid of cows is driven over the edge. A hideous plot is revealed courtesy of Miss P's knowledge of human depravity and a brief encounter with First Aid - but the question of the supernatural remains a mystery.

---

Over the Sea to Death
Below towering mountains on the Isles of Skye the indomitable Miss Pink arrives to climb from a hotel run by a retired and reactionary colonel and his discreet wife. Various mountaineers and one non-climbing partner are in residence and two guides: an expert woman and a hard-drinking man past his prime. In a situation already fraught a ravishing young hippie erupts: careless, vulnerable and passionately in love.
From the moment that Willie MacNeill tips a load of rubbish down the sea cliffs and Miss Pink glimpses a foot in the debris, events and emotions escalate and more than one person starts to consider elimination as the neatest solution to their problems. The crofters' awful garbage chute, the long waterfall and the loch below the old Viking port become the setting, typically Moffat, for expedient Hebridean murders.

---

Hardback Chivers Black Dagger (1995)

Miss Pink at the Edge of the World
Two climbers die mysteriously on the Old Man of Scamadale, a stack off the Scottish coast. One of them, Stark, is famous. He has come to reconnoitre the Old Man for a television programme. But the local laird is vehemently opposed to any kind of publicity: he wants to keep the tourists away. So Stark plans the assault on the stack with the use of boats and helicopters.
The police would have accepted the two deaths as accidents. But the laird and his climbing friends convince the police that both men were murdered. And in doing so they put themselves under strong suspicion, for they alone in the vicinity appear to have the expertise needed to perform the killings.

---