Skeleton at the Feast - Hardcover

Patricia Hall

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0749004819 ISBN 13: 9780749004811

Publisher: Allison & Busby, 2000

Synopsis

When Chief Inspector Michael Thackeray is sent on a training course to his alma mater, St Frideswide's College, Oxford, the memories come flooding back. He finds himself sleeping in the same kind of cold garret room he slept in as a student, bumping into his old tutors in the quadrangles, eating in the grand hall...Oxford is just as he remembers it. But life amongst the dreaming spires is not as tranquil as it may seem. A senior tutor has recently gone missing - taking his mistress and ?1m of the college's money with him. Thackeray reluctantly joins the investigation into his whereabouts and, as he discovers more about the cloistered world of Oxford colleges, it rapidly becomes clear that there are untold horrors just waiting to be uncovered...

About this title

About the Author

Patricia Hall is the pen name of Maureen O'Connor. She was born and brought up in West Yorkshire which also provide the setting for her acclaimed series of novels featuring reporter Laura Ackroyd and DCI Michael Thackeray. She is married, with two grown-up sons and now lives in Oxford.

From Publishers Weekly

Last seen in 2001's Dead on Arrival, DCI Michael Thackeray again combines instinct with persistent investigation to work his way through a case in this smoothly written story. The Yorkshire cop travels to Oxford University, his alma mater, ostensibly to take a course in police work. In fact, he has been sent away from Bradfield during the investigation into the shooting of one of his detectives, for which he may bear some responsibility. Upon arriving at his old college of St. Frideswide's (aka Friddies), Thackeray is besieged with disquieting memories of his unhappy days there and summoned by a former tutor, Hugh Greenaway, who asks Thackeray to look into the disappearance of a don named Mark Harrison. Harrison was an undergraduate with Thackeray, and he was a prime example of the kind of brutish snob that made Thackeray hate college. Nevertheless, Thackeray agrees to help Greenaway. He talks to Harrison's wife, Penny, and begins to question Magnus Partridge, a creepy old tutor who seems to have been at Friddies for most of its 500 years. While Penny will do anything to reveal the truth, Partridge and, as our hero slowly discovers, most of the college will do anything to protect Friddies' noble history. Back at Bradfield CID, Thackeray's underlings, detectives Val Ridley and Kevin Mower, are investigating the rape and beating of a young teenage girl, and mourning the dead detective, Rita Desai. The story moves easily between the two plotlines. Excellent pacing and nicely textured characters carry the reader along for a very pleasant ride.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Allison & Busby
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0749004819
• ISBN 13: 9780749004811
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 251