Slightly Better Books

Author Focus:

Patricia Hall

Murder Mystery

Patricia Hall

In Pictures:

****Hyperlinked titles will take you to our copy on sale or prebuilt searches of copies on sale****

Useful Links:
Books on Ebay-see our specially prebuilt search below
Books on Amazon-see our special banner of titles below

Titles to Look Out For:

About the Author:
Patricia Hall is the pen name of journalist Maureen O' Connor. She was born and brought up in West Yorkshire, which is where she has chosen to set her acclaimed series of novels featuring reporter Laura Ackroyd and DCI Michael Thackeray

2000, Allison & Busby
In Stock, Click Image to Buy!

Alternative online retailers to try:
Click here to access our prebuilt search for this title on Abebooks

Or click here to access our prebuilt search for this title on Alibris

Or click here to access our prebuilt search for this title on Ebay

Or try Biblio

• Skeleton At the Feast [top]
  First published in 2000 in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in hardcover with dustjacket, 252pp, ISBN 0749004819
  Published in 2002 in the US by St. Martin's Press in hardcover with dustjacket, 252pp, ISBN 0312282087

Storyline:Packed off to his old Oxford colleage on a course, with his career in limbo, Chief Inspector Michael Thackeray broods on an uncertain future and allows his former tutor to persuade 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.

Tormented by unhappy memories of his own time at the university, Thackeray finds himself adrift in an Oxford where nothing is as it seems. Are Harrison and his girlfriend alive or dead? How many horros, so effortlessly covered up over the years are coming back to haunt St. Frideswide's and its reluctant investigator? And what crimes link the privileged world of college cloisters to the drug dealers and squats outside the walls?

Back on home turf, his lover, reporter Laura Ackroyd, watches and waits-and asks her own questions-as the ripples caused by a young policewoman's death throw Sgt. Kevin Mower into turmoil and an ambitious woman copper sets her sights on Thackeray's job.

The wrongs inflicted on the young by an older generation and on the present by the past provide a unifying theme to this, Patricia Hall's exploration of violence, deceit and greed in settings as far apart as an Oxford College and a high-rise estate in Yorkshire