| Publisher | Severn House |
|---|---|
| Date Published | 30 April 2014 |
| ISBN-10 | 0727883895 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0727883896 |
| Format | hardcover |
| Pages | 224 |
| Price | £ 19.99 |
The Devil's Chair
by
Coroner Martha Gunn and DI Alex Randall are baffled by a series of cryptic notes following the disappearance of a four-year-old girl on a remote country road.
Review
It’s the early hours of the morning, and Tracey Walsh is driving her four-year-old daughter Daisy up the remote Burway near Church Stretton. She loses control of the car and crashes into the valley below. When rescuers arrive, Tracey is taken to hospital. But there’s no sign of Daisy.
The Devil’s Chair is set in and around Church Stretton, near Shrewsbury. It’s ostensibly an outing for coroner Martha Gunn, but also features DI Alex Randall, the man in charge of tracking down Daisy. The book is clearly some way into an existing series, but it’s woefully short on back story, so getting close to the characters is tricky.
Where the book scores handsomely, though, is in the setting, with the dark and sinister Long Mynd as a backdrop. It’s an area rife with folklore and legends, and Priscilla Masters uses this to excellent effect.
Masters is a writer who’s been around for a while with a couple of series on the go – I have a vague memory of dipping into her DI Joanna Piercy books a while back. The Devil’s Chair is perfectly readable and competent, if you overlook ragged point of view and a beginning that drifts a tad. But it’s one of those books where it feels like something is missing – and I think that’s rounded characters.
Not having read the previous books is a definite handicap in this case, as both Martha and Alex feel rather shadowy, despite feeling like characters you’d want to get to know. And I found it difficult to remember who was who in the minor roles although, ironically, there are intriguing little personal hints which set up possibilities for later books. The ending smacks of ‘home in time for tea.’ More show and less tell would have benefitted the book as a whole.
On the plus side, Masters plots neatly, uses her setting well and keeps the tension high with the mysterious notes that leave the police baffled as to Daisy’s fate.
PS: It’s not WPC. It hasn’t been WPC since dinosaurs walked the earth!
The Devil’s Chair is set in and around Church Stretton, near Shrewsbury. It’s ostensibly an outing for coroner Martha Gunn, but also features DI Alex Randall, the man in charge of tracking down Daisy. The book is clearly some way into an existing series, but it’s woefully short on back story, so getting close to the characters is tricky.
Where the book scores handsomely, though, is in the setting, with the dark and sinister Long Mynd as a backdrop. It’s an area rife with folklore and legends, and Priscilla Masters uses this to excellent effect.
Masters is a writer who’s been around for a while with a couple of series on the go – I have a vague memory of dipping into her DI Joanna Piercy books a while back. The Devil’s Chair is perfectly readable and competent, if you overlook ragged point of view and a beginning that drifts a tad. But it’s one of those books where it feels like something is missing – and I think that’s rounded characters.
Not having read the previous books is a definite handicap in this case, as both Martha and Alex feel rather shadowy, despite feeling like characters you’d want to get to know. And I found it difficult to remember who was who in the minor roles although, ironically, there are intriguing little personal hints which set up possibilities for later books. The ending smacks of ‘home in time for tea.’ More show and less tell would have benefitted the book as a whole.
On the plus side, Masters plots neatly, uses her setting well and keeps the tension high with the mysterious notes that leave the police baffled as to Daisy’s fate.
PS: It’s not WPC. It hasn’t been WPC since dinosaurs walked the earth!
Reviewed 04 October 2014 by Sharon Wheeler
