The Ring Of Death

by Sally Spencer, Penelope Freeman (Read by)

Overview

DCI Monkia Paniatowski has seen dozens of murder victims in her time, but nothing could have prepared her for the corpse in the woods. It is not so much that the man's throat has been slashed that shocks her, nor even the way he is naked - it is the way he has been carefully posed. Paniatowski has been assigned a new sergeant, who she does not entirely trust. Worse yet, an old enemy from the secret service announces he will be monitoring her every move. But why is a spy interested in a local murder? When a second victim is found it becomes clear to Monika that whatever the murderer's message is, he will not stop killing until she understands.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781407922089
Publisher:	Isis Publishing Ltd
Publication date:	11/01/2010
Pages:	8
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 7.40(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Sally Spencer worked as a teacher both in England and Iran - where she witnessed the fall of the Shah. She now lives in Spain and writes full-time. She is an almost fanatical mah jong player.

Editorial Reviews

Fans of The Dead Hand of History (2009) will welcome Spencer’s second mystery featuring Det. Chief Insp. Monika Paniatowski set in 1970s Lancashire. Early one morning in the woods outside Whitebridge, a dog breeder discovers the naked, mutilated body of a man in his mid-30s. Particularly shocking is that the dead man is on his hands and knees, rigor mortis keeping him in position. Monika and her team get to work on the case and soon learn the victim is Andrew Adair—a recently discharged army officer who was one of the paras involved in the notorious 1972 Bloody Sunday killings in Northern Ireland. Before the team makes much headway, a similar murder occurs, and Monika realizes she must figure out what message the killer is trying to send with the posed corpses—and fast—before the violence escalates. A witty protagonist and a likable supporting cast redeem what is otherwise a formulaic police procedural. (June)

Publishers Weekly

“As usual, Spencer produces a hugely entertaining police procedural, but it’s her keen perception of human nature and her ability to draw flawed but sympathetic characters that make this extension of the Woodend series such a standout”

Booklist

A man is tortured, murdered, and left in a gruesome pose in the woods outside Whitebridge, England, and DCI Monika Paniatowski's team catches the case. Adding to Paniatowski's difficulties as a female Chief Inspector is the assignment of a new sergeant with issues. The possibility that the team may be up against the IRA and the return of her personal nemesis, Mr. Forsyth (Home Office or MI5), causes Paniatowski to question her decisions. VERDICT This second entry in Spencer's spinoff series from her Charlie Woodend mysteries (after The Dead Hand of History) grabs the reader on the first page and never lets go until the shocker of an ending. Like Lynda La Plante's DCI Jane Tennison in the "Prime Suspect" series, Paniatowski must deal with the negative climate found in a male-dominated police establishment, Heartbreaking and heart-wrenching, this is Spencer at her best. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ 1/10.]

Library Journal

Beset by spies both official and unofficial, DCI Monika Paniatowski (The Dead Hand of History, 2009, etc.) investigates a series of murders as shocking as they are deliberate. Whoever killed Andy Adair went to great lengths to set the stage, first slitting his throat, then draping his corpse over a crate, and finally posing the unclothed body, now stiff with rigor mortis, on hands and knees in the woods to be found by habitual dog-walker Harold Toynbee. Why the killer went to such trouble is up to Monika to find out, with only the help of DI Colin Beresford and still-wet-behind-the-ears DC Jack Crane. So Chief Constable Baxter details DS Paul Cousins, fresh off psychiatric leave, to her team. DS Walker, her previous bagman, has been promoted, although his rise in rank does nothing to stop his determination to undermine Monika. So he secretly teams with Mike Traynor of the Lancashire Evening Chronicle to keep tabs on Monika's progress in hope of tripping her up. But the two amateur spies have nothing on sinister, silver-haired Mr. Forsyth, who comes all the way from London to tell Monika to watch her step. The entry of the secret service into her case rattles Monika but also motivates her. As she redoubles her efforts, so does the killer, littering the Lancashire landscape with naked corpses and sending a message only the new DCI can decode. Paniatowski continues to prove herself a worthy successor to Charlie Woodend as Spencer delivers another first-rate whodunit.

Kirkus Reviews