Guilty Waters

by Priscilla Masters Narrated by Julia Franklin

Overview

Cécile Bellange is a worried mother. Her 18-year-old daughter Annabelle and her friend Dorothée left Paris for a summer holiday in England, but the only contact from them is a postcard sent from Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire three months ago. Meanwhile, in England, brothers Martin and James Stuart find a note from two French girls, inviting the finder to meet them at Rudyard Lake. Their enquiries lead them to Mandalay, a guesthouse where the girls stayed, and its owner, creepy Mr Barker. Arriving in England, Cécile Bellange meets Detective Joanna Piercy, who is looking into the girls' disappearance. Soon Joanna must answer two important questions: what is the anxious Mr Barker trying to hide, and where are Annabelle and Dorothée?

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

01/26/2015
The Staffordshire moorlands provide the atmospheric backdrop for British author Masters’s briskly paced 12th procedural featuring Det. Insp. Joanna Piercy (after 2013’s The Final Curtain). Cécile Bellange, a French divorcée who lives outside Paris, comes to England in search of her 18-year-old daughter, Annable, and Annable’s traveling companion, Dorothée Caron. The two girls have been spending the summer hitchhiking around the country, but they have been out of touch for weeks, their last communication a postcard showing Lake Rudyard. Coincidentally, Joanna and her husband of nine months, pathologist Matthew Levin, are on holiday at Lake Rudyard, and she will soon assist in the hunt for Annabelle and Dorothée. Meanwhile, two brothers, Martin and James Stewart, find a note from the French girls inviting the note’s finder to meet them at the lake. Joanna’s domestic concerns lighten what is basically a sad, dark story. Readers will enjoy the neatly turned surprise ending. (Mar.)

Library Journal

03/01/2015
A picturesque Staffordshire lake, named for the poet Rudyard Kipling, loses some of its luster when it's the last place two teenage French tourists are seen one summer evening. Annabelle and Dorothée left Paris to travel through England the summer before college and ended up at Rudyard Lake, where they stayed in a bed-and-breakfast run by Mr. Barker, a caretaker who could give Norman Bates a run for his money. When two local boys find a hidden note from the girls on a popular rock-climbing peak, they do a bit of amateur sleuthing before reluctantly calling DI Joanna Piercy and her team. With no bodies and only the unsubstantiated worries of the girls' mothers back in France, it's a difficult case to investigate, but Joanna's gut tells her that Annabelle and Dorothée met an unfortunate end. Juggling her new role as the wife of the local medical examiner—who wants to start a family—Joanna works tirelessly to retrace the girls' steps before the trail went cold, all the while keeping a careful eye on the squirrelly Mr. Barker. VERDICT While the plot may feel somewhat pedestrian, readers looking for a straightforward, no-frills police procedural will enjoy Masters's solid 12th series installment (after The Final Curtain).

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173702869
Publisher:	Soundings, Limited
Publication date:	02/01/2016
Series:	Joanna Piercy , #12
Edition description:	Unabridged

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