Stalker or stalked? (Wings Over the Watcher - Priscilla Masters)

Member Name: sunmeilan

Product:	Wings Over the Watcher - Priscilla Masters
Date:	15/12/07 (96 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Compelling reading

Disadvantages: None really

When a husband approaches Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy about his missing wife Beatrice, she is dismissive of his fears. She knows his wife and thinks that she has left with a lover. In any case, she has her own problems to deal with - she has just had a miscarriage and her relationship with a colleauge is unstable. But then the body of the missing woman is found and it is clear that she was strangled to death. As Joanna starts to look into the case, she becomes more and more intrigued; it seems that there was much more to the meek and mild Beatrice than she originally thought. Could her lover have been a woman? Was the love reciprocated? And who out of the growing list of suspects committed the crime?

Having never heard of Priscilla Masters before, I didn't have particularly high expectations of the book. In fact I only chose it because it is based in and around the Staffordshire town of Leek, very near to where I was born. However, I found myself very quickly hooked by both the plot and the writing style of the author. I am pleased to find that I have discovered another good author and look forward to reading more of her work.

There is nothing particularly outstanding about Joanna Piercy. She is a typical female detective who has had to fight her way through the police ranks because of discrimination and she has trouble committing to a relationship because she is already married to her job. However, I immediately liked her no-nonsense approach to life, tempered by a recent miscarriage that has upset her usually steady life-style. This made her seem more approachable, despite the toughness. I also liked her easy-going relationship with her side-kick, Korpanski. He is a happily married man whose wife is apparently very understanding of his platonic relationship with his female boss. The fact that Piercy and Korpanski get on so well makes a refreshing change from the usual slew of detectives who either prefer to work alone or who clash with their partners.

We are also given a glimpse into the life of Beatrice, who unfortunately ends up dead. She is one of those women that everyone seems to take for granted as a kind woman who is utterly boring. I liked the way the author dealt with her as a character, because it soon becomes clear that there is a lot more to Beatrice than meets the eye, although even her close friends see fit to tease her about her dullness. It is so easy to jump to conclusions about a person, so I liked the fact that we get to see an unexpected layer to Beatrice, even though it doesn't do her much good!

I thought the plot was compelling, if not terribly original. We become aware very early on in the book that stalking comes into the equation somewhere, although it is not completely clear who is the stalker and who is being stalked. This really piqued my interest and kept me reading for much longer than I had intended; I finished the book within 36 hours. The story is told in the third person nearly always from Joanna's point of view, with occasional help from other characters - this served to throw a spanner in the works more than once - just as I thought I had worked out where Joanna was going with the investigation, something else came up so that I was never entirely sure what was going to happen next.

I liked the author's style of writing. I got the impression that the author really could write - it is not that she used long, pretentious-sounding words, but rather the way she put a sentence together so that it sounded compact, yet descriptive. Many authors of crime fiction are direct and to the point, which I usually appreciate, but in this case, I felt that the author's writing was a cut above the usual standard. I particularly liked the descriptions of the Staffordshire moorlands, which are very familiar to me.

One thing I did find strange was the prologue. This is a kind of scene setting exercise, along with a summary of the case and what it involves - we are told that same-sex stalking is an issue. I found this rather unnecessary and would have preferred that we were left to work all this out for ourselves.

I really enjoyed this book. It helped me to escape for a few hours, which is exactly what I needed. It isn't a masterpiece, but it is a fine piece of crime fiction writing and I recommend it to anyone who likes the genre, particularly if you have a link with Staffordshire!

The book is available from play.com for £5.49. Published by Allison and Busby, it has 283 pages. ISBN: 9780749081003

Summary: A good mystery set in Staffordshire