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Sal Kilkenny #4
Stone Cold Red Hot
Can Sal break the conspiracy of silence that surrounds her latest case?Sal Kilkenny is asked to discover the whereabouts of Jennifer Pickering, disinherited twenty years ago. But it seems that now Jennifer does not want to be found. And as she spends her days tracing Jennifer, Sal's nights are shattered by a dangerous stint with the Neighbour Nuisance Unit on one of Manchester's toughest housing estates. In this highly charged atmosphere it's not surprising when tempers flare... and as properties start to burn, Sal's two cases spiral out of control and events, past and present, collide with deadly intensity.Sal Kilkenny SeriesLooking For Trouble (Book 1)Go Not Gently (Book 2)Dead Wrong (Book 3)Stone Cold Red Hot (Book 4)Towers of Silence (Book 5)Bitter Blue (Book 6)Missing (Book 7)Crying Out Loud (Book 8)Praise for Cath 'Gritty, intelligent, humane and involving' Big Issue'Deftly organised, with several surprising twists.' Evening Standard'An engrossing read.' Sunday Telegraph'Real people, real problems... Staincliffe writes brilliantly and compassionately about things that matter. Seriously good.' Literary Review'Modest, compassionate... a solid ingenious plotter with a sharp eye for domestic detail' Literary Review'Complex and satisfying' The Sunday Times'about as good as the British private eye novel gets' Time Out
210 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2001
11 people are currently reading
80 people want to read
About the author
Cath Staincliffe
59 books321 followersCath Staincliffe is a best-selling, award-winning novelist, radio playwright and the creator of ITV's hit series, Blue Murder, starring Caroline Quentin as DCI Janine Lewis. Cath's books have been short-listed for the British Crime Writers Association best first novel award, for the Dagger in the Library and selected as Le Masque de l'Année. In 2012 Cath won the CWA Short Story Dagger for Laptop, sharing the prize with Margaret Murphy with her story The Message. Cath was shortlisted again with Night Nurse in 2014. Cath's Sal Kilkenny private eye series features a single-parent sleuth working the mean streets of Manchester. Trio, a stand-alone novel moved away from crime to explore adoption and growing up in the 1960s, inspired by Cath's own experience. Letters To My Daughter's Killer was selected for Specsavers Crime Thriller Book Club in 2014 and featured on ITV3s Crime Thriller Club. Cath also writes the Scott & Bailey novels based on the popular UK TV series. Cath's latest stand alone book, The Girl in the Green Dress, was inspired by her experience as the parent of a transgender child. It tells the story of a transphobic hate crime and asks the question: how far would you go to protect your child? Cath is one of the founding members of Murder Squad - a group of Northern crime writers who give readings, talks and signings around the country. Cath was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, UK and now lives in Manchester, Lancashire with her family. You can follow her on Twitter, @CathStaincliffe, which she does when she should be busy writing!
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 27, 2016
Cath Staincliffe has a reputation as one of the most esteemed crime writers in the UK and she has won numerous accolades not just for her novels, but also for her work on both radio and television. As an avid reader of crime fiction I have been keen to read her work and my first opportunity came courtesy of Stone Cold Red Hot, a title originally released in 2002 and more recently re-issued. More accustomed to reading police procedurals I am less fond of private investigator protagonists, my chief gripe being how far fetched they have a tendency to become. Car chases, gun shots and frequent gratuitous violence is the usual hallmark but Staincliffe offers something a little different with middle-aged private eye Sal Kilkenny and there is little question that she pulls this off very well! As a single mother to six year old Maddie, Sal carves out a living, struggling to break even as she runs her private investigator business from a rented cellar.
Stone Cold Red Hot focuses on two investigations with a nervous Roger Pickering going against his mother wishes as he employs Sal to uncover the truth behind the disappearance of his older sister, Jennifer, in 1976. With his mother fighting terminal cancer tracking down his only remaining family has become important to him but with very few leads to go on Sal isn't hopeful, especially if she cannot speak to his mother. Yet the case interests her as she struggles to think of a situation which would see her ostracise her own daughter. Sal is very aware that in the intervening years Jennifer has never sought a reconciliation and when initial discoveries raise more questions than they answer, she finds the case playing on her mind. As Sal spends her days searching the cold trail of Jennifer's disappearance, she is on a potentially dangerous evening assignment for the Neighbourhood Nuisance Unit gathering evidence to take several anti-social tenants to court after the harassment of a Somalian family. Fraught with tension this is not just surveillance work but requires Sal to go undercover and in proving that the campaign of harassment is sustained how long can she afford to simply watch and wait?
This is the fourth novel in the Sal Kilkenny series and works well as a standalone. Sal makes for an engaging lead and is easy to identify with her and I sense that this could be an addictive series. Staincliffe has a great appreciation for the leg work and hard yards of life as a private investigator and a single mother. As she rushes bone-tired between the two cases things on the domestic front are not all bliss, with a heady new romance on the cards for housemate Ray perhaps signalling the end of the house share with him and his six year old son, Tom.
Published in 2002, Stone Cold Red Hot does admittedly feel slightly dated but this doesn't work to the detriment of the novel. In a world where not everything is available online, the private investigator job was a much more arduous task. Sal treks the country working through telephone directories, records of births, deaths and marriages and hunched over microfiche records as she follows the trail of Jennifer! The prevalent racism more apparent in the early 2000's is depicted well throughout and the seeming acceptance and blind eye turning of a police force is a striking parallel to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry declaration of institutionalised racism amongst the force.
Cath Staincliffe has an eye for the changes which have occurred in the city of Manchester over time and she brings a wonderful sense of place to Stone Cold Red Hot, but this is not simply a geographic portrait of a city but also a tale of its people. Her insights as to how the social demographic has changed and brought successive waves of immigration and a thriving student population to the area is well conveyed. At approximately 250 pages this is a remarkably satisfying read with real characters and real situations and is unexpectedly poignant. Narrated in the first person my one bone of contention was the comments such as "I know better, now", which seemed unwarranted and threatened to confuse things. Whilst Stone Cold Red Hot may not satisfy the adrenalin junkies I found it a real page turner and Sal more than makes up for this with her realism, maturity and eye for justice. I intend to seek out not only other Sal Kilkenny novels but also further works by Cath Staincliffe.
Stone Cold Red Hot focuses on two investigations with a nervous Roger Pickering going against his mother wishes as he employs Sal to uncover the truth behind the disappearance of his older sister, Jennifer, in 1976. With his mother fighting terminal cancer tracking down his only remaining family has become important to him but with very few leads to go on Sal isn't hopeful, especially if she cannot speak to his mother. Yet the case interests her as she struggles to think of a situation which would see her ostracise her own daughter. Sal is very aware that in the intervening years Jennifer has never sought a reconciliation and when initial discoveries raise more questions than they answer, she finds the case playing on her mind. As Sal spends her days searching the cold trail of Jennifer's disappearance, she is on a potentially dangerous evening assignment for the Neighbourhood Nuisance Unit gathering evidence to take several anti-social tenants to court after the harassment of a Somalian family. Fraught with tension this is not just surveillance work but requires Sal to go undercover and in proving that the campaign of harassment is sustained how long can she afford to simply watch and wait?
This is the fourth novel in the Sal Kilkenny series and works well as a standalone. Sal makes for an engaging lead and is easy to identify with her and I sense that this could be an addictive series. Staincliffe has a great appreciation for the leg work and hard yards of life as a private investigator and a single mother. As she rushes bone-tired between the two cases things on the domestic front are not all bliss, with a heady new romance on the cards for housemate Ray perhaps signalling the end of the house share with him and his six year old son, Tom.
Published in 2002, Stone Cold Red Hot does admittedly feel slightly dated but this doesn't work to the detriment of the novel. In a world where not everything is available online, the private investigator job was a much more arduous task. Sal treks the country working through telephone directories, records of births, deaths and marriages and hunched over microfiche records as she follows the trail of Jennifer! The prevalent racism more apparent in the early 2000's is depicted well throughout and the seeming acceptance and blind eye turning of a police force is a striking parallel to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry declaration of institutionalised racism amongst the force.
Cath Staincliffe has an eye for the changes which have occurred in the city of Manchester over time and she brings a wonderful sense of place to Stone Cold Red Hot, but this is not simply a geographic portrait of a city but also a tale of its people. Her insights as to how the social demographic has changed and brought successive waves of immigration and a thriving student population to the area is well conveyed. At approximately 250 pages this is a remarkably satisfying read with real characters and real situations and is unexpectedly poignant. Narrated in the first person my one bone of contention was the comments such as "I know better, now", which seemed unwarranted and threatened to confuse things. Whilst Stone Cold Red Hot may not satisfy the adrenalin junkies I found it a real page turner and Sal more than makes up for this with her realism, maturity and eye for justice. I intend to seek out not only other Sal Kilkenny novels but also further works by Cath Staincliffe.
February 1, 2020
This is a re-read for me. I wondered why it was still on my shelves after all this time. I can now say it's because it's good. Was good enough to keep when I read it the first time and I still like it.
Sal Kilkenny is a great character and this novel she's dealing with a cold case and a very much live investigation of racial hatred.
Still relevant today.
Sal Kilkenny is a great character and this novel she's dealing with a cold case and a very much live investigation of racial hatred.
Still relevant today.
October 12, 2017
The Kilkenny books about a single mother private detective are a decent read, this one has two strands running, one with a degree of social comment included, building to a exciting ending
August 3, 2018
This was a good book as well. Not a heart stopper but a slow steady one.
February 5, 2017
Have read several of the Sal Kilkenny books and really enjoy them. This one deals with race issues and at times is quite harrowing. It also deals with an intriguing missing person's case.
December 20, 2010
Sal Kilkenny is a single mother and private investigator in Manchester. She is involved in two cases in this book: Looking for the older sister of Roger Pickering who left for university 20 years earlier and was never heard from again; and gathering evidence of racial intimidation of an immigrant Ethiopian family by some lowlifes on their housing estate.
Despite the crazy-making typeset and the fact that this was a first person account with occasional lapses into had-I-but-known, both strong dislikes for me, I did enjoy this and will be reading others in the series.
Despite the crazy-making typeset and the fact that this was a first person account with occasional lapses into had-I-but-known, both strong dislikes for me, I did enjoy this and will be reading others in the series.
April 7, 2011
I have called Val McDermid one of the greatest under-rated authors and I truly believe she is, but that "award" needs to go to Cath Staincliffe, as well. Staincliffe's books are incredibly well written and suspense building. Each one I have read of hers, I have enjoyed even more. There is nothing like a British author to weave a tale of mystery.
May 12, 2015
I really like Cath Staincliffe's books and this was another good read. Full of action and detective work with very topical scenarios. Look forward to reading the next one in the Sal Kilkenny series.
July 4, 2014
Sal is looking for a woman who hasn't been seen since 1976, and simultaneously gathering evidence fir a racial harassment case which reminds one of how many really unpleasant people there are.
July 24, 2014
Another great read for the Under Hyped Readathon!
A great mystery/thriller. At just over 200 pages, the action never lets up. A great read
A great mystery/thriller. At just over 200 pages, the action never lets up. A great read
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews