Michelle Spring

Page Updated: 11/10/01

Michelle Spring

In the Midnight Hour

Nights in White Satin

Standing in the Shadows

Every Breath You Take

Running for Shelter

Audio Books

Oct 01

Books By Michelle Spring

About the Author

Bibliography

Paperback - Orion (2001)

In the Midnight Hour
A four-year-old child vanishes without trace from a wild stretch of shoreline in north Norfolk. His body is never found.
Liam is every inch a teenager, busting quietly on a street in Cambridge when a wealthy woman befriends him, daring to hope that he is the son who vanished off a beach twelve years ago. Laura Principal is called in to settle the question of identity. Is this beautiful youth really the lost child or is he an interloper? As she searches for answers in this chilling story of identity, devotion and death, Laura comes face to face with a loss that threatens to turn her own world upside down.
The critics on Michelle Spring
'Elegant , probing, and, finally, as touching - and chilling - as a child's hand to the heart' John Harvey
'One of the most stylish thoughtful and challenging novelists around… Laura Principal is one of contemporary crime fiction's most intriguing and satisfying sleuths… an amazing series' Ian Rankin
'Milks our unease skilfully… a real feel for a menacing atmosphere' Marcel Berlins, The Times
'Sheer good writing of the kind which sustains the reader from page to page without wanting to skip a single line ... warm, but also seriously creepy Frances Fyfield
'With each book, Spring is maturing as a writer, discovering how far she can push her talent and exploring the darker recesses of the human psyche' The Times
'Astute, entertaining, right-minded and carefully constructed' Times Literary Supplement
'You pick this one up, you won't put it down!' Toronto Globe & Mail
'Genuinely chilling undercurrents, and above all that authentic page turning quality' Michael Dibdin
'Laura Principal is Britain's coolest woman private eye' Val McDermid
'Powerful emotional intensity… Spring's subtle, highly charged evocation of menace indicates extraordinary skill' Washington Post Book World
'[Spring] gives readers a female private eye comparable to V I Warshawski and a twisty psychological plot worthy of Elizabeth George' Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

First British Edition Orion (1999)

Paperback - Orion (2000)

Nights in White Satin
See Review by Val McDermid - Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill
The fourth Laura Principal thriller by the Award-Winning and acclaimed Michelle Spring does for Cambridge what Ian Rankin did for Edinburgh.
It's May week in Cambridge, a time of wild excess following the end of exams. Dressed to the nines, the students of St John's College are anticipating an all-night party. But for Laura Principal, the private investigator with the unenviable task of keeping gate-crashers out and revellers safe, the May Ball turns sour when Katie Arkwright disappears. In her white satin dress and with her halo of blonde curls, Katie looked angelic. But Laura discovers that her past, which included a spell with a shady exert agency to subsidise her studies, has been anything but. The game has turned nasty. And unless she can get to her in time, Katie may have no future at all. Laura's investigation focuses on St Bartholomew's College, Cambridge, where the present is tainted by dark echoes of the past. And when a senior tutor is found battered to death, it becomes only too clear how sinister are the secrets concealed behind Cambridge's cool facades. Meanwhile Laura's friend and colleague Stevie is in love, and her partner Sonny is behaving strangely out of character. As her search turns from difficult to dangerous, it dawns on Laura that even if she finds Katie Arkwright and brings her home, what awaits them both in Cambridge may be nastier still. Michelle Spring was raised on Vancouver Island. An academic, she has worked in Cambridge since the early 1970s, where she lives with her husband and two children.
'The best book yet in this amazing series' Ian Rankin

Paperback - Orion (1998)

Standing in the Shadows
See Review by Val McDermid - Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill
What turns a child into a cold-blooded killer?
Eleven-year-old Daryll Flatt crushed the skull of his foster mother with a concrete block. Hideous as the crime was, when the child confessed to murder the case was considered closed. Two years later Daryll's older brother Howard, riven by misplaced guilt, urges PI Laura Principal to find a motive for the murder. Laura too is haunted by Daryll Flatt - and by the unanswered questions surrounding this apparently open and shut case.
'A compulsive read' Mail on Sunday
'Set to be one of the most quietly impassioned thrillers of the year' Frances Fyfield, Mail on Sunday
'Milks our unease skilfully... She writes with intelligence and a real feel for a menacing atmosphere' Marcel Berlins, The Times
'This time, the gloves are off and Spring has let rip to produce the kind of thought-provoking yet compelling page-turner that stays in the mind long after the covers are closed' Val McDermid, Manchester Evening News

Every Breath You Take
Laura Principal and her friend Helen Cochrane are forced by a cash flow crisis to take in a lodger. Laura has misgivings about Monica Harcourt, whose jumpy behaviour strikes an odd chord. When Monica is found sadistically murdered, Laura, motivated by guilt and anger, plunges headlong into an investigation that creeps ever closer to home until more than one life is at stake and the simple life seems gone for good.

Running for Shelter
For Laura Principal and her partner Sonny, business is flourishing - until, at the home of a wealthy client, Laura leaves a cherished photograph in the hands of a Filipina maid. Within 24 hours the girl has vanished without trace. Where has she gone? And why do her employers deny she ever existed? Attempting to find the girl - and the photograph - Laura confronts cruelty, kidnap and a body in an alley, and learns a few things about herself she could well have done without.

About The Author
Michelle Spring was raised on Vancouver Island. She worked for many years as an academic in Cambridge where she lives with her husband and their two children. She has written several academic books and four Laura Principal thrillers.

Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

In the Midnight Hour ( 2001) Orion Pbk Apr 01

Nights in White Satin (Orion, 1999) Orion Pbk Jun 00 (Laura Principal)

Standing in the Shadows (Orion, 1998) Orion Pbk 1998 (Laura Principal)

Every Breath You Take (Laura Principal)

Running for Shelter (Laura Principal)