Dying Fall

Ackroyd and Thackeray #2

by Patricia Hall

Midsummer heat is building up tension on one of Bradfield's decaying housing estates and fires are stoked when two young car thieves are killed in an encounter with the police. The screws are tightened when a young girl goes missing in what looks like a carbon copy of a murder ten years before. Laura Ackroyd, reporter on the local paper, begins to wonder if the police got the wrong man all those years ago. But it's a notion fiercely resisted by DCI Michael Thackeray in spite of the growing mutual attraction between him and the red-headed reporter. Not for the first time their professional lives clash while their personal encounters become closer and anger and violence grow more threatening as they both begin to probe what happened on the Heights now and in the past.

Genres: Mystery

361 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 1995

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. She is married, with two grown-up sons, and now lives in Oxford.

Reviews

[Alan Middlemass · Rating 3 out of 5]

Contrasts

Good story and well set out. Actually a love story that book 1 suggested but preamble very unsubtley signposted. But kept waiting until late in this book with reader teased by delays and obstructions of murder cases current and old.

Pity the back end is absolutely riddled with typing errors that change words into gibberish and a brief description of a victim going into an ambulance a whole day and several chapters out of sequence.

30+ years since it was published and not even digital has been corrected. Irritating end to enjoyable text.

[Emmeline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great plot. Shame about the shocking lack of proofreading in the kindle version…

[Bill Cissna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is book two in the series -- I picked up what turned out to be book three, read it and liked it. Having now found and read books one and two, I'm enjoying the stories and the characters and look forward to reading more!

[Gary Van Cott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Satifactory. Similar to the first book.