SALLY SPENCER
James García Woods
The Shivering Turn
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Introducing Oxford-based private investigator Jennie Redhead in the first of a brand-new mystery series.
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'My daughter's not just run away - she's dead!'
When Mary Corbet walks into private investigator Jennie Redhead's rundown Oxford office one pleasant spring day in 1974, she is a desperate woman.
Although she's convinced that her daughter has been murdered, she can get neither the police nor her husband to agree with her. Jennie is not convinced either, but more out of compassion than conviction agrees to take the case.
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The only clue she has to go on is a fragment of an obscure 17th century poem she finds in Linda's bedroom:
Or will you, like a cold and errant coward/Abandon all and make a shivering turn.
But from that one clue Jennie's investigations will lead her beyond the city's dreaming spires to Oxford's darker underbelly, in which lurks a hidden world of privilege, violence and excess.
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Excellent Booklist review of The Shivering Turn , here's the first and last sentences:
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"Following the success of her Woodend and Paniatowski novels, the multitalented Spencer introduces a new series starring Jennie Redhead ...
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... Spencer scores another top-notch hit with this new series, which features her usual skilful writing, clever plotting, and intriguing characters."
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- Emily Melton
For the complete review, click here:
Dry Bones
Private investigator Jennie Redhead finds her loyalties divided when she investigates the decades-old murder of a college student.
Oxford, 1974. In the cellars beneath St Luke's College, a sealed medieval ventilation shaft is opened up to reveal human bones. Two bodies, buried thirty years apart ... but is there a connection?
Desperate to protect the College's reputation - and finances - the bursar, Charlie Swift, hires his old friend, private investigator Jennie Redhead, to find out the identities of the two victims.
But as Jennie pieces the clues together, it becomes increasingly clear that Charlie knows rather more about the murders than he's admitted.
As she uncovers a series of scandals stretching back more than sixty years, Jennie is forced to question how well she really knows her old friend Charlie Swift - and whether she can trust him...
Daughters of Darkness
Private investigator Jennie Redhead is hired to investigate a murder that's left the police baffled, in this gripping historical mystery set partly in 1970's Oxford and partly in war-torn 1940's London.
Oxford, 1975. Three years ago, world-renowned anthropologist Grace Stockton was slain in a brutal, unprovoked attack. Despite a large-scale police investigation, the identity of the prime suspect was never uncovered . . . and neither was the location of Grace's head. But Grace's daughter, the wealthy academic Julia Pemberton, refuses to accept that the trail has run cold. Determined to find out who killed her mother, she knows just the woman for the job: private investigator Jennie Redhead. Who was the woman caught on CCTV visiting Grace's isolated home on the day of the murder? And why did she cut off her victim's head? Jennie's search for answers takes her on a dark, disturbing journey into the past, from the ancient tribal customs of Papua New Guinea, to war-torn 1940's London, and to a dark tangle of secrets and scandal that someone is desperate should never be revealed . . .
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Publishers Weekly Starred Review:
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"Superior... Refreshingly, Spencer doesn't make Redhead, who's capable of snark and petty malice, wholly likable. Readers will look forward to the further adventures of this distinctive lead