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Yellowthread Street #5
Skulduggery
“An inspired poet of the bizarre” – New York Times Book Review
Out of the mist-enshrouded sea a wooden raft drifts slowly into shore on Hong Bay beach. It carries no sail or rudder, just a selection of miscellaneous objects: a man’s skeleton with its ankles roped together, a dead fish, a mound of sweet potatoes, a set of false teeth and a ten-inch length of blue galvanised iron drainpipe.
The morgue give their verdict: murder, committed twenty years before.
Detective Chief Inspector Harry Feiffer of the Yellowthread Street police station is called in to investigate. The false teeth quickly identify the victim. But who killed him, buried him, and then dug him up again twenty years later only to set him adrift on a raft?
Another intriguing, action-packed mystery starring the boys from Yellowthread Street.
Praise for the Yellowthread Street series –
“Marshall has the rare gift of juggling scary suspense and wild humor and making them both work.” – Washington Post Book World
“Marshall’s style – blending the hilarious, the surreal, and the poignant – remains inimitable and not easily resisted.” – San Francisco Chronicle
“Marshall has few peers as an author who melds the wildest comedy and tragedy in narratives of nonstop action.” – Publishers Weekly
“Marshall is building a growing, iconoclastic body of work that mixes weird fantasy [and] wayward characterization . . . to produce a subtle, charged, atmospheric, lush fiction hybrid sure to satisfy those with a taste for mysteries on the far edges.” – Philadelphia Inquirer
“Despite the wild humor, Marshall’s stories contain excellent police procedure, real suspense, and fine irony . . . incessantly scary.” – Chicago Tribune
“Among the best police procedural series on the market.” – Detroit Free Press
“As an inspired poet of the bizarre, [Marshall] orchestrates underlying insanity into an apocalyptic vision of the future.” – New York Times Book Review
“Marshall’s novels feature seemingly supernatural events that turn out to have logical, if not precisely rational, origins. He has savage fun with police procedure.” – TIME
“Nobody rivals Marshall’s ability to expose the links between comic hysteria and the most mundane human foibles, from greed to cowardice to simple funk.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Moves at the speed of a bullet; don’t read it aloud or you’ll run out of breath.” – Chicago Sun-Times
Out of the mist-enshrouded sea a wooden raft drifts slowly into shore on Hong Bay beach. It carries no sail or rudder, just a selection of miscellaneous objects: a man’s skeleton with its ankles roped together, a dead fish, a mound of sweet potatoes, a set of false teeth and a ten-inch length of blue galvanised iron drainpipe.
The morgue give their verdict: murder, committed twenty years before.
Detective Chief Inspector Harry Feiffer of the Yellowthread Street police station is called in to investigate. The false teeth quickly identify the victim. But who killed him, buried him, and then dug him up again twenty years later only to set him adrift on a raft?
Another intriguing, action-packed mystery starring the boys from Yellowthread Street.
Praise for the Yellowthread Street series –
“Marshall has the rare gift of juggling scary suspense and wild humor and making them both work.” – Washington Post Book World
“Marshall’s style – blending the hilarious, the surreal, and the poignant – remains inimitable and not easily resisted.” – San Francisco Chronicle
“Marshall has few peers as an author who melds the wildest comedy and tragedy in narratives of nonstop action.” – Publishers Weekly
“Marshall is building a growing, iconoclastic body of work that mixes weird fantasy [and] wayward characterization . . . to produce a subtle, charged, atmospheric, lush fiction hybrid sure to satisfy those with a taste for mysteries on the far edges.” – Philadelphia Inquirer
“Despite the wild humor, Marshall’s stories contain excellent police procedure, real suspense, and fine irony . . . incessantly scary.” – Chicago Tribune
“Among the best police procedural series on the market.” – Detroit Free Press
“As an inspired poet of the bizarre, [Marshall] orchestrates underlying insanity into an apocalyptic vision of the future.” – New York Times Book Review
“Marshall’s novels feature seemingly supernatural events that turn out to have logical, if not precisely rational, origins. He has savage fun with police procedure.” – TIME
“Nobody rivals Marshall’s ability to expose the links between comic hysteria and the most mundane human foibles, from greed to cowardice to simple funk.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Moves at the speed of a bullet; don’t read it aloud or you’ll run out of breath.” – Chicago Sun-Times
- GenresMysteryProcedural
192 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1979
4 people are currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
William Marshall
259 books29 followersWilliam Marshall (or William Leonard Marshall) (born 1944, Australia) is an Australian author, best known for his Hong Kong-based "Yellowthread Street" mystery novels, some of which were used as the basis for a British TV series.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 3, 2010
Fifth of the Yellowthread Street mysteries. Tightly plotted, and the final explanation is psychologically satisfying, even if not entirely believable.
August 6, 2014
a book found in the infamous library discard box. I remember hearing about the Yellowthread Street Mysteries, and I thought to myself, "Great! I can try one for free."
I'm glad it was free. I understand that part of the enjoyment of the Yellowthread books likes in the slightly offbeat characters. Unlike Stuart Kaminsky's Rostinkov mysteries most of the characters did not engage my interest. Oh Auden finally got a little interesting about 2/3rds of the way through to story. I found Auden's imagining himself as the Great Detective amusing. I actually had more fun with Feiffer's Macao counterpart Chagas. Author William Marshall did his best dialogue writing job on Chagas. The mystery really didn't draw me in either.
I don't know. Maybe it was because I think this entry is towards the mid-point of the series, and possibly I'm missing something. After the last two books that I have read just wondering if I'm a curmudgeonly mood lately.
I'm glad it was free. I understand that part of the enjoyment of the Yellowthread books likes in the slightly offbeat characters. Unlike Stuart Kaminsky's Rostinkov mysteries most of the characters did not engage my interest. Oh Auden finally got a little interesting about 2/3rds of the way through to story. I found Auden's imagining himself as the Great Detective amusing. I actually had more fun with Feiffer's Macao counterpart Chagas. Author William Marshall did his best dialogue writing job on Chagas. The mystery really didn't draw me in either.
I don't know. Maybe it was because I think this entry is towards the mid-point of the series, and possibly I'm missing something. After the last two books that I have read just wondering if I'm a curmudgeonly mood lately.
June 17, 2010
mysteries can be very surreal..
May 3, 2017
This is a great series.
I was delighted to find them in the stacks, way back when.
Not sure what reminded me of these books. I'm guessing I read them about 25 years ago.
Unfortunately my library does not have e-version.
I was delighted to find them in the stacks, way back when.
Not sure what reminded me of these books. I'm guessing I read them about 25 years ago.
Unfortunately my library does not have e-version.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews