Slipknot

Martha Gunn #2

by Priscilla Masters

Hiding from the truth brings dark and fatal consequences

Callum Hughes has been labelled a killer and a psycho. He has been labelled by the press, by his classmates and most of all by the family of the boy he stabbed. Roger Gough has been labelled a victim. He is described by everyone the police question as a sporty, funny and popular boy who was brutally murdered by Callum. At least, that’s what his friends and family are saying. But things are rarely so black and white.

When Callum is found dead in his cell just two days after his arrest, it is accepted that he killed himself. But the coroner, Martha Gunn, dares to dig a little deeper, unravelling a truth that is far more disturbing and distressing than anything the papers could have made up. She is determined to solve the mysetery and reveal the truth behind the destroyed lives of two very different boys.

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Audiobook, Procedural

288 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2007

About the author

Priscilla Masters' writing career started in 1987 when she published Mr. Bateman's Garden, a children's book set in Biddulph Grange Gardens belonging to the National Trust. After that she created Inspector Joanna Piercy and has now also written a number of Medical Mysteries.

Priscilla Masters lives in Shropshire, England. She works part-time in Staffordshire as a practice nurse.

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Happy to say that this novel was a lot more exciting than the first. It involved a number of topical issues including bullying, the brutality of the prison system in the context of first offenders, rookie error, and veteran officers getting a little on the side for favours. It also described the vindictive, criminal behaviour that grieving parents may inflict upon those they suppose responsible for their loss.

[David Gilchrist · Rating 5 out of 5]

.I found this book very disturbing, brilliant, well written, flows well. This story will Chime with mothers of teenage boys everywhere. Now onto the next.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Several hundred words into the notes I'd written, either Goodreads or Firefox collapsed. Am I going to recreate it all at this time of night?

Perhaps not.

With apologies to the author, this is a novel with an important subject that is not as well executed as it might have been. The subject's an important one: school bullying. The victim of two years' worth of vicious bullying finally snaps and stabs his worst tormentor; put on remand, he apparently commits suicide during his first night of confinement. But did he really? Coroner Martha Gunn investigates.

The publisher should have put a copyeditor and a proofreader through this to get rid of the worst of the follies. Here's one among dozens that I found:

'He admits kicking Callum on the shin but,' He grinned, 'and I quote 'I never touched 'is bleedin' face.' He couldn't say whether when Callum arrived he had or complained for any facial trauma.' (page 180)

So, amid much else, we have the quoted-quotes error plus, though it's not obvious here, an open-quote rather than an apostrophe at

never touched 'is

On page 252 we have:

Once I realised that Casper's experiments had proved that the post-mortem findings when a body had been strung up two hours after death I had a different time frame.

Of course, it's unfair to judge a book by its typos. There were other sources of irritation, not least that there's a plot element that's clearly continued from a previous Martha Gunn novel and is unresolved by the end of this one. (Someone has been sending her mysterious messages in the form of bunches of flowers, scratched records, anonymous phonecalls. Who could it be? Ooo-er.) I imagine this is supposed to make readers insatiably curious to get hold of the next volume. It just annoyed me sufficiently that I made a resolution not to.

By the end of this book I grudgingly quite liked it. But it was a hard long haul before that.

[Damaskcat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Martha Gunn becomes involved in investigating an apparent suicide in a young offenders institution. She is unhappy about it for many reasons as she does not believe it is a case of suicide at all. The victim is a young boy who knifed a fellow school mate in a playground incident. But the more Martha looks into the case the less likely it seems to her that Callum would have set out to murder the boy nicknamed Dreadnought.

Thanks to Martha's instincts she and DI Alex Randall[prove that there is more to the death than meets the eye. I found this book compelling and harrowing reading and stayed up into the early hours of the morning to finish it. The writing is low key and the characters all too believable and I found some of the book reduced me to tears.

This is an excellent series and the books can be read in any order. I recommend them to anyone who enjoys M R Hall's series featuring coroner Jenny Cooper.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Priscilla Master's Martha Gunn series. Martha is a coroner who is as inquisitive as a detective and uses her own skills in helping to solve mysteries. Well written and highly recommended.

[Cidney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Martha Gunn is the coroner for Shropshire based in Shrewsbury, she is a widow with 2 teenage children and the youngest has just gone to join a football academy in place of school and isn't yet fully settled. And then she receives information about a young 13yr old lad, the same age as her son, who has knifed a fellow pupil and he is at death's door in hospital right now. The police have interviewed the boy and his mother and whilst feeling something for him as he was being bullied unmercifully by a overly large gobby bully of a lad and he had bought a knife and pulled it out of his bag and stabbed him close to his heart. He is in hospital having had surgery and on a ventilator, although his breathing isn't helped much by the excess fat he has around his heart says the surgeon.

Callum Hughes is a small slightly built lad being bullied by an overly large lad and all his entourage, which all bullies have and they can't leave his group because they are all scared. You really feel sorry for this little 13yr old every day being beaten by this group whilst trying hard to run away from them. He has no friends who would help him because they know they would suffer the same fate as he is.

And in court he is found guilty and is desperate to stay with his mom but he has to go to a young offenders unit and there he meets his room mate, a giant of a boy the same as the bully he's left behind. Now you really do feel for him, and the prison guards are not nice people either. They lock him in with this bigger bully and in the morning they find him dead having been hung by a cord around his neck. The guards say he committed suicide. His mother is absolutely distraught, her world has gone from underneath her and she didn't even get a proper goodbye when having to leave him.

Martha knows this is wrong but as a coroner there is nothing she can do about it, then the one young girl who defended him by making a statement about his bullying in front of his parents in the coroner's court dies in a house fire along with the baby she was minding. And the bully's parents are making threats against Martha too. What a really nice shower they are, and what's maddening is that over the country and other countries there are families like this creating havoc and relying on bullying to be the big people and children are the ones suffering at the hands of their bullying children. It was with despair that I closed the book. This book should be read in schools to and by pupils to get the real feel of fear these children have to face every day at school, a place where they should feel safe.

[readingwithkarin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Musím priznať, že anotácia vyzerá fakt veľmi zaujímavo, až to čitateľa ťahá do knihy. Lenže kniha mňa vôbec ani trochu nezaujala. Mala len 200 strán, ale asi dobré štyri dni som sa s ňou pasovala.

Príbeh ako thriller mi teda vôbec tak neprišiel. Ani neviem aký žáner by som knihe pripísala, ale ako thriller určite nie. Kniha bola veľmi smutná, pretože išlo o úmrtie hlavného hrdinu Calluma. Autorkin štýl písania mi tiež nesadol. Písala to strašne až rýchlo mi to prišlo, len aby sa tej knižky už zbavila. Kľudne to mohla rozpísať na 300 strán, a možno až vtedy by to bolo zaujímavejšie. Vlastne aby som sa lepšie vyjadrila, v knihe bol jeden z prípadov aj prípad úmrtia Calluma, až do skoro samého konca nevedeli kde je vlastne dôvod, čo za tým je, kto za tým je, a vôbec všelijaké iné prípady ktoré mali ešte vyšetrovať a zrazu, už sa schyľovalo do úplného konca, to znamená 10 strán dokonca, a zrazu autorka všetko ako keby vypľula zo seba na jednej strane.

Takéto mínusy v knihách ma vedia veľmi sklamať, hlavne keď ma kniha 200 strán, ako mala aj táto - a kľudne to autor mohol rozpísať, napísať tam ešte nejaké tie tajomstvá, zvraty, napätia a podobných iných vecí - tu som sa toho žiaľ nedožila. Jednoducho som sklamaná a ani neviem čo iné napísať bez toho, aby som nespoilerovala, tak z tejto knihy to bude len taky slabý a kratučký opis. 😃

[Mandy Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audio- As this was only my second audio book I found the different narrator strange at first and was not keen on some of her voices for the characters and that put me off the characters. The story was good and relevant. Bullying is awful and ruins lives and this story was sad,I felt so sorry for Callum and Chelsea and Callum’s mum.I didn’t quite warm to Martha Gunn,she was a bit cold and smug but would read another book with her in it.

[Julie Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a sad and disturbing story about the consequences of bullying.

The second book in the series begins with coroner Martha Gunn involved in the death of a boy, but nothing is straightforward.

I liked the flow of the writing, its pace and the interactions between the characters. The plot had its twists and there was a good sense of place.

Overall, this was a worthwhile and engaging read.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in 2017 and did not remember it at all, but maybe because I was listening to it this time. The reading was excellent and I would like to listen to the next one in the series. I’ve liked all of the Priscilla Masters’ books I’ve read.
Martha is an interesting character with an interesting and likable work mates.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Martha Gunn is the Coroner in a small Historic Village
of Shewsbury. A thirteen year old boy puts a knife into another
13 boy on the school grounds. The boy who has the
knife is a quiet child. One goes to the hospital. The other
a juvenile jail. Life changes for all invoke. It is up to Martha
to figure out what really happened.

[Mary Sue Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Really Good Mystery

Book 2 in this series did not disappoint. Coroner Martha is at it again. This time their are several murders caused by bullying. The reader goes inside a criminal facility for juveniles after a murder by a 13 year old boy. The subject of bullying is illustrated well in this book. I highly recommend.

[Donna Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Martha Gunn series continues

Excellent read love the returning characters. Sad story of bullying and tragic consequences. Finally leaned a bit more about the police detective Alex Randall’s situation which helped understand his character.
Can’t wait for next book

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Martha Gunn series just gets better and better. This one has a fascinating theme and continues to develop the characters we grew to like in book one I’m excited to read book 3 in the series

[aprilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm enjoying the series

[Marssie Mencotti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely persistence on the part of Martha Gunn in solving a difficult and very sad cae of bullying being at the base of a great deal of sadness and covert criminality. I enjoyed the read very much.

[Lena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really hard to get in to, but it got there in the end. 3.5 ⭐️

[Debra Whisson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this on its re release as the Stoke Heath Murders .

Thoroughly enjoyed this book, can’t wait for the next

[Gill Day · Rating 5 out of 5]

One if the most addictive books I've read. Tension, pathos, terrific plotting and rounded characters. I loved it. Waiting for Book 3 with great anticipation!

[Denise Brennecke · Rating 5 out of 5]

a very poignant subject

What a story !! It was brilliantly worked out despite the convoluted journey to get there. Coroner Martha Gunn gives you a little more faith in the system.

[Kathleen Hagen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slipknot, by Priscilla Masters, narrated by Patricia Gallimore, Produced by Clipper Audio, downloaded from audible.com.

I am always amazed at Gallimore’s ability to portray male and female voices. Her male voices, whether they are detectives and doctors, or school bullies, are very well done. I forget much of the time that she is a woman narrator. In this book, Callum Hughes is the typical nurd victim, laughed at by the bullies in his class, particularly their leader, Roger Gough. It goes on for a couple of years. One day, Callum, having had enough, comes to school with a knife and when Gough starts bullying him again on the playground, he stabs him. He is arrested. Roger Gough was wounded but not dead, so, if he didn’t die, the crime would be attempted homicide and would lessen the sentence he might get, but Callum knew that going to prison would only put him in contact with other bullies as bad as, or worse than, Gough. Then, after one night in jail, Callum Hughes is found dead, with the implication that he committed suicide. Then, Gough dies as well. We have two families, the Gough family with mafia connections, and Callum’s mother, a single mother doing the best she could to raise her son, pitted against each other. And the coroner isn’t ready to write off Callum’s death as a suicide. She probes deeper to find out what really happened. A very very good book exploring yet again the dynamic between bullies and victims who finally snap.

[Craig W. · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Because of its awful finality sometimes death can achieve something that life never could.” –Martha Gunn, in Slipknot.

When persistent bullying pushes a thirteen year old boy over the edge, he knifes his antagonist and severely wounds him. Two days later the boy is found hanged in prison and the bully soon dies from infection. Two single mothers are contrasted. The mother of the attacker is devastated by the loss of her only child. The coroner and protagonist, Martha Gunn, is a single mother of a thirteen-year-old boy whom she has just sent to a top class football/boarding school. There’s plenty of comparison and contrast going on as a result. I found myself reading quickly to get past Martha Gunn’s introspection and get to the end.

The mystery part of the book explores the bullying concept from multiple angles and results in a reasonably satisfactory conclusion. Interesting characters are introduced and there are intriguing loose ends that I’m sure will be developed as this series progresses.

As a side note, the book is set in modern Shrewsbury, which adds interest for readers of the Brother Cadfael books.

[Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Martha Gunn gets involved in a 13-year-old boys death. The boy has been bullied at school by several people and just can't take it anymore. He buys a knife to defend himself and ends up stabbing one of the bullies. Unfortunately everyone lies and portrays the victim as the actual perpetrator. This leads to the 13-year-old boy being arrested for aggravated assault and possibly attempted murder should the bully die. The writer makes the reader understand the mind of the victim for being bullied and how it affects his life. This is actually a very sad book as there are no winners.

[Kipi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basic, slow paced, typical Martha Gunn. The story wasn't that interesting this time. The crime happens very early on, and the things that unravel after that, didn't intrigue me enough. I like the setting and the characters, but other books of hers have been better.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Second book in this series was just as interesting a read as the first book. Like the primary character and the setting too. Sadly, I think there are only three Martha Gunn books so I will have to try the author's other series.

[Jane Fenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing complex web of crime and vengence.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did not hold my attention.

[pamela · Rating 1 out of 5]

it was ok. Just a good story.