Customer Reviews

Laughing Boy (Detective Inspector Charlie Priest Mystery)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

LAUGHING BOY opens in 1969 California, a time of hippies and protesters. We meet Rock Singer Tim Roper and his band, but they are only the prologue as Tim is violently murdered.

Flash to Yorkshire in the present and murder is still the order of the day. Laura Heeley, an average thirty-eight-year-old mother of two, is stabbed in the back on the way home from bingo. Detective Inspector Charlie Priest and his team are, stumped except for a vague idea that her murder might be linked to the murder of teenager Robin Gillespie earlier. Then Colinette Jones, a popular and attractive student is strangled, her body dumped on the roadside.

Two females, one male, no connection to each other, however Charlie and his team soon begin to suspect the murders are part of a series, with more to come. And as they sift through red herrings and taunting letters they find a connection to long dead Tim Roper. The number of victims rises and it becomes clear to Priest that this could be his biggest challenge yet as he races against time to figure out what message the killer is trying to send through a childlike song Roper wrote for a friend's newborn a generation ago.

Stuart Pawson's police stories keep getting better and this, the eighth five star mystery in the series is one that held me captive for a whole Saturday. Not only does Pawson paint a good mystery, but his attention to detail, people and places, is second to none. His Detective Inspector Charlie Priest is both likable and flawed and an absolute delight to spend a weekend with.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene

Stuart Pawson had a career as a mining engineer, followed by a spell working for the probation service, before he became a full-time writer. He lives in the village of Fairburn, in Yorkshire only about four or five miles from where I live myself. A place I regularly visit to look at the bird sanctuary there with all the water birds and a welcome pint in the Bay Horse.

This is the eighth book in the DI Charlie Priest series: When Colinette Jones fails to return home and a body turns up not more than half a mile from her house DI Priest knows he has to make that house call that every mother dreads, and every copper for that matter. Further a field Laura Heeley is also found dead down a country lane, the only sign of violence on the body, a single stab wound.

Is there a link between the two young women, apart, that is from their unfortunate death? And what if anything is the link with a sixties rock star? In a small town to all intents and purposes cut off by the foot and mouth outbreak DI Priest knows that he must apprehend the killer before he or she strikes again.