Page Updated: 09/07/2007

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Priscilla Masters - Page 3

And None Shall Sleep Catch the Fallen Sparrow A Wreath From My Sister Winding Up the Serpent

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First British Edition Macmillan (1997)

Paperback - Allison & Busby (1999)

And None Shall Sleep
See Review by John Boyles
Jonathan Selkirk, ruthless high-powered solicitor, recognises a threat when he sees one - and he is in little doubt that this new letter suggesting he 'make a will' is intended to frighten him. Indeed, only hours later he is recovering in the Leek Cottage Hospital with a suspected heart attack.
Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy is also at the hospital that morning-the victim of a road accident - and inadvertently finds herself at the scene of the crime. For late that night, Selkirk mysteriously disappears from his private room. Has he discharged himself? Or has he been abducted?
The discovery of a dead body two days later leaves Joanna coping not simply with a murder investigation, and a badly broken arm, but also with the arrival of the Regional Crime Squad. For the formidable Superintendent Karen Pugh believes the murder is the work of a professional contract killer-and the small village of Leek is where they are going to trap him.

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Paperback - Allison & Busby (1998)

Catch the Fallen Sparrow
Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy and her sergeant, Mike Korpanski, find themselves investigating the murder of a ten-year-old boy whose burning body is found beneath the Winking Man, a desolate outcrop from which nature has carved a human face.
The body is scarred by cigarette burns, his hands tattooed and clothes scruffy - but he is wearing expensive Reebok trainers and a solid gold ring on his left hand, monogrammed AL, which belonged to the local MP who had been dead for over a year…
Who is he? And who is the mysterious old woman who watched his body burn...?
'Priscilla Masters is fast establishing herself as a highly regarded novelist in the detective story genre... The plot is cleverly constructed and tight.' Staffordshire Evening Sentinel
'A hauntingly atmospheric tale of the tragic life and death of a young boy set on the bleak windswept moorlands of Staffordshire.' Herald & Post

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First British Edition Macmillan (1995)

Paperback - Allison & Busby (1999)

A Wreath From My Sister
Sharon Priest is on the moors in a flimsy red dress and spindly high-heels. It is cold, very cold. as a snowstorm sweeps the moors and Leek. But Sharon doesn't feel the cold ... Neither does Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy, for she it at the annual Legal Ball fending off Randall Pelham who wants her to find his missing daughter Deborah. It is not Deborah but Sharon who soon concentrates Joanna's mind. The thaw sets in, and Sharon's frozen body and its horrific injury reveal that Joanna has a murder on her hands. And not just one, either …

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Paperback - Allison & Busby (1997)

First British Edition Macmillan (1992)

Winding Up the Serpent
It was the dog who first knew something was wrong. When the alarm clock clicked on at 6.55 he opened one brown eye and waited. But nothing happened. The time on the clock radio added another minute and the wet tongue ran twice over the cold face before Ben realised this morning was different.
His mistress would not wake. By eleven o'clock Evelyn Shiers had finished at the market. Strange, she thought as she caught sight of the red car still standing in her neighbour's drive. Was she on holiday? Why was the dog whining? And at the doctor's surgery the two receptionists were in a quandary, too. Where was Sister Marilyn Smith?
Later that afternoon Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy and Detective Sergeant Mike Korpanski break into Marilyn Smith's house. It is in the third bedroom that they find the missing nurse, lying spreadeagled across the bed. She is provocatively dressed and elaborately made up. She is also quite dead.
Despite a lack of evidence at post mortem, Detective Inspector Piercy remains convinced that Marilyn was murdered. A newcomer in an isolated Moorlands town, Joanna Piercy must battle against the prejudice of colleagues and the closed ranks of a small community in her determination to find a killer. Or is she wrong? Perhaps her colleagues are right and her recent promotion has made her over-zealous. Is it possible that Marilyn Smith's death was not murder after all?
N.B. The first edition of Winding Up The Serpent is now a collector's item, fetching up to £60 a copy. Luckily, Allison and Busby have just released the first paperback edition.
'It's Masters' first novel and a cracking start to her career in literary crime' The Express
'Could well have been taken from the pages of a Ruth Rendell mystery' Sentinel
'An excellent start.' Yorkshire Post
'It's Masters' first novel and a cracking start to her career in literary crime.' Herald Express
'Priscilla Masters is set to become a master of the art of suspense. This book will have readers glued right up to the last page - and hungry for more.' Staffordshire Alive
'A cracking start to a career in literary crime' Herald Express

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