Person or Persons Unknown

by Anthea Fraser

Overview

Biographer and journalist Rona Parish investigates a young woman’s past in this twisty traditional mystery.

Rona Parish's last assignment, a series of articles on the town of Buckford, is almost complete, when a young woman approaches her with a request to help her trace her natural parents. Rona's curiosity is aroused - not least because she discovers that the woman's birth mother had been murdered in her bath twenty-five years earlier.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780727875112
Publisher:	Severn House
Publication date:	05/01/2006
Series:	A Rona Parish Mystery , #3
Edition description:	Large type / large print
Pages:	367
Product dimensions:	5.76(w) x 8.74(h) x 1.02(d)

About the Author

Fraser announced at the age of five that she wanted to be an author.

Editorial Reviews

Zara Crane is young, pregnant, and wants to find her birth parents. She asks investigative journalist Rona Parish to help. Rona quickly discovers that Zara's mother was murdered when Zara was only a few weeks old. The murderer was never found, and now someone is trying to stop Rona from figuring out the identity of Zara's father. At the same time, Rona is facing major problems in her own family. Person or Persons Unknown is fast paced and builds logically to a dramatic climax. The murderer may be obvious, the text full of clich s, and the interpersonal relationships lacking in depth, but the book is still entertaining. Jacqueline Tong gives an excellent performance of a title well suited to the audio format. Recommended for public libraries with large audiobook collections. I. Pour-El, Des Moines Area Community Coll., Boone, IA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Biographer Rona Parish (Brought to Book, 2003, etc.) is finishing up a series of articles when a chance meeting fills her quiet life with danger. Zara Crane, an adopted child unconcerned with her biological parents until she became pregnant, approaches Rona and her artist husband Max Allerdyce at a party. She's discovered that her mother, Gemma Grant, had been murdered, possibly by Zara's biological father. Rona is reluctant but finally agrees to give the project six weeks if she can write about her findings. Gemma, a junior reporter for a radio station, had been rooming with Selina O'Toole, now a well-known London-based correspondent. Using the code name Morrison for her lover, Gemma claimed he emigrated to Australia without knowing she was pregnant. Rona is disconcerted to find that among Gemma's former boyfriends are Jonathan Hurst, her twin Lindsey's current lover, and Phillip Yarborough, whose wife is takes painting classes with Max. Max, who suspects Phillip of spousal abuse, is busy working on a portrait of politician James Latymer, and Rona doesn't want to mention the threatening phone calls and e-mails she's received since a news story about her search, and her fears intensify when Selina is pushed in front of a bus. Clear your calendar: Sympathetic characters draw you in to an absorbing search that keeps you guessing until the last chapter.

Kirkus Reviews

English biographer Rona Parish recently gained fame for solving a murder. Consequently, a young woman, anxious about a possible murder in her own murky past, persuades the writer to investigate. In most of the ways that count, Jacqueline Tong’s narration is undistinguished, serviceable but ordinary and slightly mannered. Except in one respect. She has infused this whodunit with an aura of feminine British primness, of practical shoes and to-do lists and meeting deadlines. This personality, bespeaking the heroine-sleuth’s middle-class sensibility, elevates the story above the routine. It’s the detective more than the detecting that hold one’s interest. Tong makes Parish a role model for independent middle-class women -- conventional yet sensitive, gutsy, feminine, and capable. Y.R. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

OCT/NOV 06 - AudioFile