The Unquiet Dead - Softcover

Longworth, Gay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007139551 ISBN 13: 9780007139552

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2004

Synopsis

Years ago, the historical Marshall Street Baths in the heart of Soho were full of kids taking swimming lessons and playing in the water. Today they're crowded with addicts, homeless people and, DI Jessie Driver's new boss thinks, a teenage runaway they're trying to track. But when CID searches the decaying building, they don't find Anna Maria Klein--but they do find a man's mummified body buried in the ground in the rat-infested basement. Who was he? How long has he been there? And what happened to him? Jessie, on the outs with her by-the-book new boss, tackles this mystery from the bowels of the Marshall Street Baths instead of the higher-profile runaway case. She's got the eccentric caretaker of the building to help her, but he seems fixated on the day a young boy drowned at the baths, many years ago. Plus, a local priest seems intent on giving his opinions, which are decidedly more otherworldly than Jessie would like. All in all, The Unquiet Dead is a fresh and pulse-pounding second novel in this streetwise procedural series from up-and-coming suspense talent Gay Longworth.

About this title

About the Author

Born in 1970, Gay Longworth trained as an oil trader after graduating from university. Eventually, though, her love for writing wouldn't be ignored, and she left the job and moved to Cornwall, England, to write. The Unquiet Dead is her second novel to be published in the U.S., following Dead Alone. She is now a full-time writer in London, where she lives with her husband and daughter.

From Publishers Weekly

In British author Longworth's engrossing second police procedural (after 2002's Dead Alone), Det. Insp. Jessie Driver is still emotionally off-kilter after a reckless affair with a high-profile suspect. She gets off to a bad start with her new boss, Detective Chief Inspector Moore, who's also recovering from an infidelity, by putting one foot after another firmly in her mouth. Moore harshly disapproves of Driver's handling of a missing-persons report filed by a high-strung actress and reassigns the matter to a male colleague turned rival. When the trail leads to an abandoned public swimming pool in a decaying gym, Driver stumbles across a mummified corpse that may be connected with an old drowning case. The plot threads are nicely interwoven, and Longworth plausibly portrays the conflicts among the police. She does an excellent job of keeping the reader guessing and skillfully hides clues in plain sight. The one false note is the romantic subplot involving rock star P.J. Dean, with whom Driver unwisely got involved in her last major investigation. Dean's lavish lifestyle and big ego seem a poor fit for Driver, who's more at home grappling with the mundane realities of the lives of those whose paths she crosses and whose passions and pain the author renders so well.
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Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0007139551
• ISBN 13: 9780007139552
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 352