All the Dead Lie Down by
Mary Willis Walker
pbk out May 99
(HarperCollins)
at £5.99
Ah the Dead Lie Dawn by Mary Willis Walker
Molly Cates is journalist with a compulsion: she is still obsessed with her father's death. Nearly thirty years after the event, she is convinced that it was murder, and she intends to find out.
Molly is a woman who sees a story in just about every situation and she is willing to take breathtaking risks to see a story through to the end. She is following the debate in the senate on concealed handguns, while simultaneously working on a feature about homeless women. Cow Lady, aka Sarah Jane Hurley, is mean and may be a little mad, but she isn't stupid, and when she hears two men hatching a deadly plot against the Senate, she knows just who would be interested.
The tension is sustained throughout, and the scenes involving the street people have an disconcertingly real feel to them. Just when you think you've got it all worked out, Walker brings a new factor into the equation. Molly may be flawed, but she's feisty and she won't let go until All the Dead Lie Down. The final revelation about her father's death brings the denouement to the heights of Shakespearean tragedy, in a plot twist that will keep you guessing till the end.
(
Margaret Murphy
- author of Desire of the Moth & mistress of the psychological suspence novel)
