Skeleton at the Feast - Hardcover

Patricia Hall

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0749004819 ISBN 13: 9780749004811

Publisher: Allison & Busby, 2000

Synopsis

With an inquiry into the death of one of his officers hanging over his head back in Yorkshire and his career in limbo, DCI Michael Thackeray sets off for his alma mater, Oxford College, for a summer course, all the while brooding on his newly uncertain future. Before long, a former tutor has persuaded him to investigate the disappearance of a senior don. Why has Dr. Mark Harrison abandoned his wife, his family, and his students so abruptly? And why has no one heard from him or his girlfriend since the day they left St. Frideswide's? The college needs some answers urgently.Back on their home turf, Thackeray's girlfriend, reporter Laura Ackroyd, watches and waits--and does some of her own investigating--as the ripples caused by the young policewoman's death throw young sergeant Kevin Mower into turmoil and an ambitious officer pursues Thackeray's job.As Laura Ackroyd battles on the home front, Thackeray is tormented by unhappy memories of his own time at Oxford. Are the missing professor and his girlfriend alive or dead? How many more horrors, so effortlessly covered up over the years, will come back to haunt St. Frideswide's, as well as Thackeray himself? The answers to these questions may be more than he bargained for, and the distance between the privileged world of college cloisters and the violence outside its ivy-covered walls may turn out to be just an illusion.

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
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0749004819
• ISBN 13: 9780749004811
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 251