Kay Mitchell
A Rage of Innocents
A Portion for Foxes
A Strange Desire
In Stony Places
A Lively Form of Death
Writing as Sarah Lacey
About the Author
Bibliography
A Rage of Innocents
See Review by Val McDermid
Lucy is sixteen, suspicious by nature, and homeless. But she's
also six months pregnant, so when she's picked up by the Malminster police and taken to a
refuge she stays there grudgingly - just for one night. One night turns into two, then
three, and then Father Donnelly introduces her to the Cedars Nursing Home, where in
exchange for domestic work she's offered bed and board until after her baby's birth. It
looks like things might work out for Lucy after all …
But it's hot and humid in Malminster. Tempers are fraying, a rotting body has been
discovered in a ditch swollen by rain, and trouble of the worst sort is on its way for
Chief Inspector Morrissey.
"One of Britain's most under-rated crime
writers" Val McDermid
"Mitchell brings a humane eye to human frailty in a textbook example of what the
English police procedural can be in sensitive hands" Val McDermid, Manchester Evening
News.
"The author 's work combines sharp psychological insight, a lucid picture of the nuts
and bolts of solid policing, sympathetic probing of intimate relationships, and above all,
the ability to build and sustain an atmosphere loaded with anxiety and suspense - all
defined by a literate style that 's never pretentious but, at times, approaches poetry.
" Kirkus
'… once again [Kay Mitchell] has produced a gritty, finely-plotted tale that is more
than just another police procedural. With these and her Leah Hunter tax inspector novels -
written under the pseudonym Sarah Lacey - Mitchell is establishing herself as one of our
most creative crime writers.' Hartlepool Mail
A Portion for Foxes
A cold killer with a grudge against vagrants haunts the
streets - a killer clever enough to clean up after himself and leave no clues - and all
Malminster CID can do is wait for the next atrocity, which is not a state of affairs to
sit well with Chief Inspector Morrissey.
Then a college student goes missing and the task of finding her falls to Detective
Sergeant Barrett. Something of a relief, really, to be doing something positive. Until the
lake ice thaws, and she turns up dead.
It looks like suicide, but the urban fox who feasted on the dead girl's pizza knows
better, and Barrett, inflicted for the first time in his career with a hunch, won't let
the case drop. It's stalemate. Until another vagrant dies and Morrissey sends out a decoy
duck.
Which teaches one constable just how dangerous a job policing can be.
Kay Mitchell's fourth mystery featuring Chief Inspector Morrissey and the Malminster CID
is an engrossing novel with a vivid cast of characters, and a classic crime novel to
please the most demanding reader.
'…combines sharp psychological insight, a
lucid picture of the nuts and bolts of solid policing, sympathetic probing of intimate
relationships, and above all, the ability to build and sustain an atmosphere loaded with
anxiety and suspense - all defined by a literate style that's never pretentious but, at
times, approaches poetry. For police procedural fans, and others an uncommonly rewarding
experience.' Kirkus Reviews
'.. A novel which is not only engrossing but deeply disturbing as well.' Gerald Kaufman in
The Scotsman
'Police procedurals are ten a penny, but this is a prime example of the genre at its
best..., the plot is a cracking one.' Yorkshire Post
'A welcome return for DCI Morrissey and the Malminster CID' Liverpool Daily Post
A Strange Desire
He was dead before he hit the water. Not a bad way to go. Fast
and no regrets.
So why won't his widow accept the Coroner's verdict of a simple heart attack? And why is
someone using threats to keep her quiet? And why has the dead man's briefcase mysteriously
disappeared?
Chief Inspector Morrissey's investigation reveals that Malminster is not as it seems. When
the body of a brutally murdered woman is found to be that of a powerful town official's
mistress, Morrissey uncovers some shocking truths exposing an underside of unbridled
corruption and conspiracy.…
'Mitchell's sensitive treatment of the domestic
lives of her heroes and villains is as artful as her skill at weaving all the dangling
threads of a complex puzzle into a coherent, totally compelling whole. A can't-put-it-down
gem' Kirkus Reviews 'A fast moving well written story that will delight crime novel
addicts and bring Kay Mitchell many more followers' Yorkshire Gazette and Herald
In Stony Places
'Bad things don't happen to nice girls …'
It was a comfortable prejudice, but by the time the body of the third murdered girl is
found on the common, every woman in Malminster - including Chief Inspector Morrissey's own
wife and daughter - is in danger. The police are hunting a madman who will kill again. And
their only possible clue to his identity is a dead girl's diary which mentions Rob: a man
who no one I seems to know.
As a public guardian of the law, Morrissey feels he should at least be able to protect his
own family. But with the threatening phone calls comes the realisation that the unknown
murderer has other - very sinister - ideas …
'Following the success of "The Silence of
the Lambs", crime novels about series murders have become fashionable. This… is
a good example of the form. The gritty northern setting, the relentless pace ... and the
shrewd characterisation of Morrissey, his colleagues and family, all contribute towards an
entertaining read… the race against time is grippingly described.' The Criminologist
'[Kay Mitchell is] a welcome addition to the English-village tradition' Kirkus
A Lively Form of Death
The gossips of a tranquil village on the outskirts of
Malminster have a field day spreading the news that Helen Goddard's husband has been
seduced by the local femme fatale, Marion Walsh.
Then Marion's charwoman is poisoned by milk obviously intended for her employer, and
suspicion naturally falls on Helen Goddard until Marion herself is brutally murdered and
Chief Inspector Morrissey discovers that a lot of people wanted her dead.
And then there are the missing children, too...
As Morrissey digs deeper he begins to untangle a hideous web of perversion, envy and
murder - and skeletons start to tumble out of some very influential cupboards indeed…
'[A] well-plotted, tersely scripted first novel'
Publishers Weekly
'Lots of local colour and colourful characters, a closed circle of suspects… the
formula is an old one, but this story shows how much potential the formula still has.'
F.E.Pardoe
''...an intriguing little thriller … Kay Mitchell builds a neatly joined web of crime
that distributes clues and red herrings in an appealing way.' Romford Post
'A thoughtful piece of detective writing' The Lady
About The Author (in her
own words...)
Writing is an incurable disease - once bitten by the bug, that's it! It's
in your blood for life. The bug bit into me when I was eight, and took a good, big bite
that caused small itchy fingers to laboriously produce a story of myth and magic called
The Blue Wizard. I didn't know it then, but that was my teething ground for series
writing, one adventure following another as fast as my fingers could move.
The wizard and his wand were a long way from the murder and mayhem in A Lively Form of Death, the first in a series of police
procedurals built around the character of Chief Inspectorlohn Morrissey of the
hard-pressed Malminster CID written and published just in time for the 1990 London
Bouchercon. The following year In Stony Places continued Morrissey's investigations and a
new character grew in my head and demanded to be given life. Her name was Leah Hunter, a
young and feisty twenty-five year old, whose crimebusting activities are a joy to write.
Don't ask me where Leah came from - I don't know - all I can tell you is that one day I
woke up and there she was in my head, slightly cynical, nosy as a sniffer-dog, and
bursting with one-liners. And that's how the second series was born, with File Under
Deceased, written under the pseudonym of Sarah Lacey It's
also how I learned that riding two horses can sometimes be difficult...
Leah Hunter's home ground is Bramfield, a Yorkshire town with a geography quite different
from that of Malminster where Chief Inspector Morrissey has his patch. Easy then to keep
them separate! I wish! Streets have a habit of migrating from one series to the other, and
pub names are even worse. I promise with each written book that I will find a way to
cross-reference all this stuff- but such laborious office work gets in the way of writing
and it always remains undone. The cross-overs get caught at final edit but oh for a
software programme that would do it all for me. It's lucky the characters behave, if they
migrated along with the pubs and streets I could find myself in real trouble.
Is there a positive side to writing a series? Yes! I can let the characters grow and
change from book to book. They can age and fight, lose family and friends, marry and have
children, just as they would in life, they become people I know in a real way, and I try
to make this feeling of reality reach out to the reader so that they too can be a part of
it. My writing has changed since that first book, and grown both darker and grittier as
I've found my own voice. I have a very strong sense of evil as a tangible presence in the
world, and because of that I refuse to sanitise crime, or to gross over its effect on the
lives of those it touches. This is particularly so in the Morrissey series, where I try to
explore the minds and motivation of the villains as deeply as those of the law-keepers and
innocents. The fifth book in the series, published this year is A RAGE OF INNOCENTS, and I think its brought me a little
closer to where I want to be with my writing.
The question I find myself asked more than any others, is why a woman of such quiet
ordinariness as myself would wish to explore the darker side of life. The answer is that
given by Mallory when asked why he chose to climb Everest
'Because it's there...'
Bibliography