Bitter Blue (Sal Kilkenny Mysteries) [Hardcover]

Cath Staincliffe (Author)

Book Description

Series: Sal Kilkenny Mysteries | Publication Date: July 1, 2003

On her first day back after the Easter break Manchester-based Private Investigator Sal Kilkenny takes on two new cases. The first is to discover who is sending offensive poison pen letters to hotel receptionist Lucy Barker. The second is surveillance work for a couple who want reassuring that there are no nuisance neighbours or criminal activity in the area they re planning to buy a new home. As Sal prepares to stake out the streets a bitter cold snap plunges the country into arctic conditions. Her stress levels are not helped by the escalation of the campaign against Lucy Barker and her inability to nail the perpetrator who maddeningly avoids capture. Plus there s trouble at home as Sal's daughter Maddie seems unable to settle at school. When Sal's normally mundane surveillance duties bring her face to face with a grim discovery and violent crime she's sure that it just can't get any worse before it gets better. Unfortunately for Sal there is more than one surprise in store for her and a nightmarish sequence of events may well turn out to be a matter of life and death...

Editorial Reviews

Review

It’s always exciting to see a writer getting better and better, and Cath Staincliffe is doing just that.’ -- Manchester Evening News

About the Author

Raised in Bradford, Cath Staincliffe graduated with a degree in Drama and Theatre Arts from Birmingham University. She moved to Manchester where she lives today, which provides a background for her stories. Her debut novel, "Looking For Trouble", was short-listed for the Crime Writers Association's John Creasey Award for best first crime novel and her work has also been serialised on Woman's Hour. She lives with her partner and their three children.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Allison & Busby (July 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0749006064
• ISBN-13: 978-0749006068
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,222,492 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can a Single Sleuthing Mom Know any Peace?, April 19, 2010

By 

Shane Shogren (Las Vegas, NV) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bitter Blue (Sal Kilkenny Mysteries) (Paperback)

Manchester sleuth and single parent Sal Kilkenny and her seven-year-old daughter Maddie share a house with single father Ray and his son Tom. She's a working woman who struggles to balance the pressures and problems of private and professional life.

Problems such as Maddie's sudden reluctance to go to school and the fact that she's unwilling to talk about it and that she's misbehaving in ways she never would have before.

Problems such as the case of Lucy Barker, a young woman who works at a Salford hotel and has been receiving poison pen letters threatening her death.

Problems such as the case she is working for a middle-aged couple who are buying a house in an expensive area. They want the neighborhood checked out and while doing that Sal has to stake out the street in the nighttime cold.

There seems to be very little to go on as far as the second problem is concerned, because Lucy has few friends, her parents live in Australia and her fiancé had been killed in auto accident from which she barely escaped with her life. The third problem has Sal out in the arctic-like cold investigating the people who live in a derelict house and also a pair of lesbians, one of which is abusing the other. And then there is always the problem of her daughter in the back of her mind.

As the problems escalate Sal is pulled in three different directions, pulling the reader right along with her. Ms. Staincliffe knows how to jump from one plot line to another without losing her reader's interest. She knows how to use the treat of violence to keep the suspense flowing and she knows how to make you like her heroine, even though said heroine can sometimes be as infuriating as all heck. But as infuriating as Sal sometimes gets, she's a great character and I really liked this book.