Tangled Web UK Review May 2009
Buried in Clay by
Priscilla Masters
hbk out May 09
Published by Allison Busby
at £19.99
Priscilla Masters’ sixteenth crime novel strikes me as something of a departure from its predecessors – more of a venture into the field of romantic suspense than a police novel such as her books about Joanna Piercy, or a medical-based thriller. But it shares in common with her other work a strong sense of place, and a love of her home territory – Staffordshire and South Cheshire. The story blends elements of the past and the present, as do the books of Kate Ellis, but in a different way. ‘We cannot help but walk over our past’ muses the narrator, antiques dealer Susanna Paris, and this book demonstrates the truth of that observation. In April 1967, Susanna discovers at an auction an intriguing jug, adorned with a picture of a public hanging. She buys it, and is plunged into a sequence of events which change her life forever. The passage of time, as events move on from that saleroom purchase, is effectively done, and the book derives a great deal of strength not only from its convincing rural locale, but also from the author’s knowledge of history, and of antiques (she was, at one time, an antique dealer herself.) In a prefatory note, Priscilla Masters explains that the original version of this story was written over twenty years ago. The manuscript was lost, but she was encouraged by her present publishers to rewrite the story. I am glad they did, because this an enjoyable story, told in the author’s customary very readable style.
(
Martin Edwards
- author of the highly acclaimed Harry Devlin Mysteries)
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