FINAL CURTAIN, THE

by Priscilla Masters

Overview

A former child soap star needs Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy’s help – are her claims real-life drama or just an act?



Just back from her honeymoon, the last thing Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy wants deal with on her return to work is nuisance calls from an old lady ringing the police incessantly to report seemingly trivial incidents.

T

he woman in question is Timony Weeks, a sixties’ child star in the once-popular soap Butterfield Farm, who lives in an isolated farmhouse. Is she putting on an act and wasting police time, or is someone really trying to frighten her? Joanna is dubious, but as events become even more creepy and disturbing, her instinct tells her something is not right. What is Timony hiding? As she digs into her past, Joanna discovers a shocking secret. It seems that someone may have sinister intentions towards Timony after all . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780727883049
Publisher:	Severn House
Publication date:	08/01/2013
Series:	A Joanna Piercy Mystery , #11
Edition description:	First World Publication
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Priscilla Masters is the author of the successful ‘Martha Gunn’ series, as well as the ‘Joanna Piercy’ novels and a series of medical mysteries. She lives near the Shropshire/Staffordshire border, works part-time as a respiratory nurse in the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and has two grown-up sons and one grandson.

Editorial Reviews

In British author Masters’s well-paced 11th Joanna Piercy mystery (after 2012’s A Velvet Scream), the newlywed detective inspector faces two professional challenges: her exasperation with the nuisance calls from Timony Weeks, a child TV star in the 1960s, and the imminent arrival of a new, by-the-book chief superintendent. Is Weeks batty or is someone trying to intimidate her? How much of the Leek Police resources can be devoted to investigating her calls? The complaints become increasingly unsettling, yet Piercy’s efforts to identify likely suspects and a motive are stymied by Weeks and her companion, Diana Tong. Not until a murder occurs late in the book can Piercy devote full resources and attention to the events at remote Butterfield Farm, a recreation of the location where the TV series in which Weeks starred was filmed more than 40 years earlier. Attentive readers are likely to guess the victim and to narrow the list of suspects before the denouement, but Masters produces surprises to the end. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

The Piercy novels are character-driven procedurals, and this one features a particularly intriguing mystery

Booklist

The Piercy novels are character-driven procedurals, and this one features a particularly intriguing mystery

Booklist

A solid police procedural especially likely to appeal to 1960s nostalgia buffs.”
Kirkus Reviews on The Final Curtain

"Masters well-paced 11th Joanna Piercy mystery, produces surprises to the end."
Publishers Weekly on The Final Curtain

“The Piercy novels are character-driven procedurals, and this one features a particularly intriguing mystery”
Booklist on The Final Curtain

From the Publisher

09/01/2013
Someone has hated child actor Timony Weeks for decades, and now DI Piercy must puzzle out who before the anger turns deadly. The 11th case for the Staffordshire detective (after The Velvet Scream).

Library Journal

A former child star, a lonely moor, a series of threats: Do they add up to attention-seeking or something a good deal more sinister? After finally marrying pathologist Dr. Matthew Levin (A Velvet Scream, 2012), DI Joanna Piercy returns from her exotic honeymoon to find that her colleagues have been plagued by calls from Timony Weeks, once the child star of the very popular 1960s series Butterfield Farm. Timony lives with her day companion, Diana Tong, in an isolated farmhouse, a faithful recreation of the house in the show. She's been complaining about being spied on and other trivial incidents, but Joanna has a feeling that there's more to these episodes, especially when Timony's jewels are stolen and her precious and valuable cat is killed and left hanging on her front door. The answer would seem to lie in Timony's past, which bears little resemblance to the childhood described by her publicity releases. Her family was very poor, her father a criminal and her marriages failures, beginning with the one to the much older man who played her father on Butterfield Farm. In fact, the segments of the program Joanna watches are distinctly creepy in their echoes of Timony's early life. Joanna, who has her hands full adjusting to married life and preparing for an unwanted new boss, continues to look into Timony's past in her spare time until the case explodes when Timony is shot dead, leaving Joanna to use her famous nose to uncover hidden clues to solve the case. A solid police procedural especially likely to appeal to 1960s nostalgia buffs.

Kirkus Reviews