Nights in White Satin [Hardcover]

Michelle Spring (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1999

"Powerful emotional intensity . . . The book hits you where you live," raved the Washington Post Book World about Michelle Spring's Standing in the Shadows. The Los Angeles Times hailed it as "[a] suspenseful thriller . . . truly startling." Now Michelle Spring returns with a psychologically astute novel that unfolds against the stately backdrop of Cambridge, England.

But behind this refined university setting lies something truly sinister.

For private investigator Laura Principal, the case begins unexpectedly at the annual May Ball, a jubilant celebration marking the end of examinations, an avalanche of food and fountains of champagne. Laura is hired to provide security, but somewhere between the dancing and the fireworks, a student disappears.

Katie Arkwright wore white. Sleek, elegant, in silver armlets, she was a vision of purity. But when Laura starts probing into the missing woman's life, she finds that Katie concealed a dark side. With this jarring revelation, Laura opens a floodgate of damning secrets and double lives--encompassing a college don's mysterious death and the discovery of the skeletal remains of a baby.

The deeper Laura searches into a tangled past, the more tension mounts in every corner of Cambridge--where someone waits, coiled to strike. And strike again.

Enigmatic characters, shameful acts. Hidden motives as passionate as they are malignant. A conspiracy of silence that shields an unspeakable truth. In Nights in White Satin, Michelle Spring penetrates the complex impulses that can seize desperate souls--and once again creates an incisive novel of psychological suspense.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Anglophiles will delight in this Cambridge-based tale, which convincingly weaves the city's geography and history into its well-crafted plot. Spring thankfully avoids the bane of many mysteries set in a famous city, breaking the history into easily digestible tidbits and never sounding like a travel guide. Readers will quickly warm to protagonist Laura Principal, a private investigator who helps support the agency by taking seemingly mundane gigs like providing security for Cambridge's annual May Ball. When a female student disappears after the ball, however, the job quickly turns menacing and eventually leads to murder. Meanwhile, a handsome academic makes a play for Laura, whose relationship with boyfriend Sonny has been a little shaky of late. Spring effectively mixes plenty of humor into her realistic, hard-edged crime story; readers will find themselves chuckling frequently at Laura's wit and ironic view of the world. A good choice for fans of P. D. James' Cordelia Gray. Jenny McLarin

From Kirkus Reviews

Even though men will sometimes be boys when women and drink are on offer, nothing could be more decorous, or more jealous of its propriety, than the May Ball, when Cambridge students celebrate the end of exams. That's why Philip Patterson, the master of St. John's College, passes over the police to ask Laura Principal, who's just finished arranging security matters for the ball, to look into the disappearance of Katie Arkwright, a visitor from lowly Anglia University across town, who asked her prim escort, Jared Scott-Pettit, to leave the dance and then took off without him when he declined. The briefest investigation discloses Katie's earlier brush with Cambridge: while she was waiting tables at a private dinner for the Dorics, 40 undergraduates and recent alumni of St. Bartholomew's, in the college's Echo Room, her clients turned on her, stripped her, and assaulted her. Is the person behind her disappearance now Roger Duff, ringleader of the Dorics, or Stephen Fox, senior tutor at St. Bart's, who sniffs to Laura that Katie was anything but blameless in the incident? Before Laurabereft of her partner and sometime lover Sonny Mendlowitz, who's off trying to vindicate a client accused of beating a prostitutecan focus her suspicions, murder narrows the field of suspects and raises the stakes for those remaining. Good Cambridge backgrounds and a strong sense of moral outrage offset the predictability and occasional self-importance of Laura's fourth case (Standing in the Shadows, 1998, etc.). (Mystery Guild selection) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (June 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 034542493X
• ISBN-13: 978-0345424938
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,762,336 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best new writers, July 21, 2000

By 

Carol McGinnis Kay (Columbia, SC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nights in White Satin (Hardcover)

This is another fine novel--well-written, compassionate, and intelligent--from one of the best of the new writers. Spring's characters and situations are complex, and the action typically has a reality (not to be confused with toughness) missing from many mystery novels.

I am dismayed and bewildered by the negative comments from the New England reader who apparently wanted Spring to have written another book, one with predictable feminist role models. One of Spring's strengths is the very lack of predictablity--her characters are as rich in detail and complex motivation as people we know.

I too heard Spring speak at PCA and I was impressed by the candor,intelligence, and passion of her remarks. She is a superb writer who lets us live a scene with her characters, and she thinks deeply about what she does with her books.

Starting with "Every Breath You Take" I have been hooked by Michelle Spring, and I can hardly wait for the next one.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just highly recommended, it's a MUST., May 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Nights in White Satin (Hardcover)

Nights In White Satin' by Michelle Spring

At the Cambridge May ball, on a warm balmy magical evening in June, amidst champagne, smoked salmon, music and laughter, young, pretty Katie Arkwright disappears.

In this, the forth in the series featuring Laura Principal, Private Investigator, Aardvark Investigations had been retained to repel gatecrashers and maintain security at the Cambridge May Ball. Following the disappearance, Laura is retained by Stephen Fox, senior tutor at Bart's to find the missing girl.

Whilst pursing her investigations into Katie's disappearance, a murder and an unexplained death unfold. Both shocking. Are they related to the missing girl? Could the solutions be locked in the past?

The writing in this book is beautiful, Michelle descriptive powers brought the scenes to life, I was there. At all times during the story, the weather is hot, I felt this heat, and the beauty of Cambridge. The contrasts of life she portrays are so vivid. Some of the settings invoked a time gone by, and when Laura goes punting with her friend Helen down the river to Grantchester for a picnic, it brought to mind Stands the church clock at ten to three, and is there honey still for tea'.

This is a book full of full of beauty, violence, sadness, pain, and emotional conflict. It's also about choices, and the guilt that comes from fast actions that we think will solve an immediate problem and then we find that we maybe cannot live with them. also the resulting pain.

It's also a first class mystery, which I urge you all to read. This is not just highly recommended, it's a must.

Lizzie Hayes 15 May 1999

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A mystery that takes the reader into toll of rape on women, June 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Nights in White Satin (Hardcover)

I just finished reading Michelle Spring's newest Laura Principal mystery, Nights in White Satin. This mystery packs a wallop. Very terse and sensitive at the same time. Spring `s novels highlight a feminist perspective in detective fiction. Each of her novels calls attention to a social issue that particularly affects women--even Standing in the Shadows can be viewed from that vantage point. Its strong stuff. And, Laura Principal is terrific!