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Sal Kilkenny #2
Go Not Gently
Juggling the school-run with assignments is a strange mixture for Sal Kilkenny, private investigator and single mother. But the toughest part of her job is answering the unanswerable. As, for instance, when Sal's new client Agnes Dolan asks why her friend Lily Palmer, recently installed in Homelea Nursing Home, should decline so rapidly into Alzheimer's. At first, it seems to be a tragedy rather than a mystery - but when Sal digs deeper she finds this domestic case is far more dramatic than it appears...
392 pages, Paperback
First published November 13, 1997
9 people are currently reading
91 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 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 12, 2012
Love Cath Staincliffe and this book was no exception. This book truly did have me guessing how it was going to come together and I really didn't see the end coming. She is a master of UK mystery..I just wish it wasn't so difficult to get her books in the US.
October 26, 2019
Compelling and captivating
I love the way Staincliffe writes with such precision and order, as if she is writing a list. The way that Sal describes her days are very ordered and quite satisfying to read. The second in the series and it just gets better and better. I feel as if I know and understand Sal and I love the domestic set up she has. As in the first, Sal delves headfirst into her cases and risks life and limb in the quest for the truth. A brilliant second book, can't wait for the next installment...
I love the way Staincliffe writes with such precision and order, as if she is writing a list. The way that Sal describes her days are very ordered and quite satisfying to read. The second in the series and it just gets better and better. I feel as if I know and understand Sal and I love the domestic set up she has. As in the first, Sal delves headfirst into her cases and risks life and limb in the quest for the truth. A brilliant second book, can't wait for the next installment...
July 30, 2018
This book bored me. I started skipping pages. It had no interesting moments or nothing that gripped me at all. No great characters either. Not my style.
August 20, 2018
An older book I recently found, but the themes of aging, love, dementia, medical malfeasance continue on into this century.
May 11, 2014
This was another novel I undertook in my interest to learn more about my new residence—Manchester, England—choosing this author because she’d been cited for doing a good job of portraying the city in which she and her principal character lived. The story was deceptively simple and breezy, a good mix of contemporary life and the desultory, quotidian aspects of being a low-level private detective in a large metropolitan setting, and it all ended with a very great revelation of (and unspoken guilt about) inadvertent complicity in an unsolved murder.
The first-person narrator, Sal Kilkenny, is a single mother, living in a large house with a single father, each swapping and sharing child-care and household duties in order to better accommodate their waning and waxing job situations, she as a detective and he as a builder and carpenter. In between the business of simply caring for the kids and maintaining the home, two cases begin to emerge, each beginning inauspiciously with a phone call or phone message. Interestingly, the phone is at the heart of one of the two cases, as there are issues with her answering machine that bring into focus an especially important message. The novel appears to be set in ‘95 or ‘96, just on the verge of internet and cell phone saturation (but neither in much evidence here), and there are references to the city’s preparations for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, a multi-sport international event whose bid was won in 1995 and promised the city many jobs and much new development.
A truck driver has Sal tail his wife, fearful that she may be having an affair. She does so, and at one point needs some information, and the homey details of acquiring that information from the receptionist make Sal appear resourceful. This quotidian aspect of Sal’s personality, work, and milieu make her a sympathetic character, not necessarily a vessel for someone craving identification with a superhuman agent involved in highly charged, highly complex capers. Sal’s is troubled that she must upset the visible angry husband, and she is wracked with guilt and concern, hoping they’ll be able to work things out.
Meanwhile, threaded through the infidelity case and daily activities is another case involving an old woman whose mental faculties rapidly decline when she moves into an old age home. As Sal and the old woman’s friend try to account for this aspect, more things begin to go wrong, and the woman ends up in another, more restrictive care center. As they try to assess what’s going on, the old woman ends up in hospital with a brain aneurysm, which requires surgery.
And, meanwhile, the woman she’d tailed is found murdered at her home. The police question Sal, and she is able to supply the husband with an alibi, as there is a phone message left at the time of the murder which indicates the husband—based on background noises she recognized from previous phone calls—was miles away at his place of work.
The case of the premature Alzheimer’s settles down enough that Sal is able to fit most of the pieces together, seeing that there is a conspiracy of three doctors who’ve got tangled motives of profit, research, and scientific aggrandizement. There is a climactic chase, capture, imprisonment, and fight scene that are all drawn out in almost comically prosaic fashion as slight Sal and her geriatric companion try to deal with a violent coke-fueled doctor, finally awkwardly wielding a fire extinguisher to bludgeon him and make their escape.
Later, case(s) solved, recovering from her wounds, sharing in the triumphs of friend who’s had a successful art show, they end up in car park near where the unfaithful wife had been murdered. Sal sees and hears a medley of active delivery trucks, sees a nearby payphone, and hears a public address system squawking, much in the way it had when the husband had left his message...
It’s a nice jolt at the conclusion, and I was left wondering just what is was that Sal could possibly do at this late date (though it’s revealed earlier that the case against the wife’s lover had not prevailed). The scenes where Sal meets the husband after the murder can be reviewed for the way in which Sal acts out her belief that he must be innocent, showing him concern and sympathy. In all, the novel delivers up a good, fast-paced story, using a narrator whose voice is appealing and situation sufficiently interesting, whose down-to-earth qualities make her an identifiable human being, and not some sort of super agent with an unbelievable arsenal of weapons, self-defense skills, posh background and education, and the savoir faire to meet all international exigencies. Sal Kilkenny ain’t none of that.
The first-person narrator, Sal Kilkenny, is a single mother, living in a large house with a single father, each swapping and sharing child-care and household duties in order to better accommodate their waning and waxing job situations, she as a detective and he as a builder and carpenter. In between the business of simply caring for the kids and maintaining the home, two cases begin to emerge, each beginning inauspiciously with a phone call or phone message. Interestingly, the phone is at the heart of one of the two cases, as there are issues with her answering machine that bring into focus an especially important message. The novel appears to be set in ‘95 or ‘96, just on the verge of internet and cell phone saturation (but neither in much evidence here), and there are references to the city’s preparations for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, a multi-sport international event whose bid was won in 1995 and promised the city many jobs and much new development.
A truck driver has Sal tail his wife, fearful that she may be having an affair. She does so, and at one point needs some information, and the homey details of acquiring that information from the receptionist make Sal appear resourceful. This quotidian aspect of Sal’s personality, work, and milieu make her a sympathetic character, not necessarily a vessel for someone craving identification with a superhuman agent involved in highly charged, highly complex capers. Sal’s is troubled that she must upset the visible angry husband, and she is wracked with guilt and concern, hoping they’ll be able to work things out.
Meanwhile, threaded through the infidelity case and daily activities is another case involving an old woman whose mental faculties rapidly decline when she moves into an old age home. As Sal and the old woman’s friend try to account for this aspect, more things begin to go wrong, and the woman ends up in another, more restrictive care center. As they try to assess what’s going on, the old woman ends up in hospital with a brain aneurysm, which requires surgery.
And, meanwhile, the woman she’d tailed is found murdered at her home. The police question Sal, and she is able to supply the husband with an alibi, as there is a phone message left at the time of the murder which indicates the husband—based on background noises she recognized from previous phone calls—was miles away at his place of work.
The case of the premature Alzheimer’s settles down enough that Sal is able to fit most of the pieces together, seeing that there is a conspiracy of three doctors who’ve got tangled motives of profit, research, and scientific aggrandizement. There is a climactic chase, capture, imprisonment, and fight scene that are all drawn out in almost comically prosaic fashion as slight Sal and her geriatric companion try to deal with a violent coke-fueled doctor, finally awkwardly wielding a fire extinguisher to bludgeon him and make their escape.
Later, case(s) solved, recovering from her wounds, sharing in the triumphs of friend who’s had a successful art show, they end up in car park near where the unfaithful wife had been murdered. Sal sees and hears a medley of active delivery trucks, sees a nearby payphone, and hears a public address system squawking, much in the way it had when the husband had left his message...
It’s a nice jolt at the conclusion, and I was left wondering just what is was that Sal could possibly do at this late date (though it’s revealed earlier that the case against the wife’s lover had not prevailed). The scenes where Sal meets the husband after the murder can be reviewed for the way in which Sal acts out her belief that he must be innocent, showing him concern and sympathy. In all, the novel delivers up a good, fast-paced story, using a narrator whose voice is appealing and situation sufficiently interesting, whose down-to-earth qualities make her an identifiable human being, and not some sort of super agent with an unbelievable arsenal of weapons, self-defense skills, posh background and education, and the savoir faire to meet all international exigencies. Sal Kilkenny ain’t none of that.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 29, 2017
Where the first Sal Kilkenny novel dealt with the awful things that can happen to children and teenagers, this one, the second, looks at what can befall vulnerable older people.
This reminded me in some ways of Joan Aiken's The Embroidered Sunset - one old lady who is concerned about what has happened to her friend, another old lady - but other than that basic premise, a good dose of suspense, and a strong sense of place in both novels, they are very different.
Sal is still tending her garden, caring for her strong-willed 4 year-old daughter Maddie, and working as a private detective. Helping an 80-something year old woman find out whether her friend is being properly treated in an aged care home puts Sal in even more danger than tackling organised crime did in Looking For Trouble.
I'm not sure what I think of the revelations about what was happening in the aged care home and the psych hospital, and one bad guy's attempt to hush it all up. A bit too melodramatic for me.
The twist in the tail of the secondary mystery was very neat, though.
This reminded me in some ways of Joan Aiken's The Embroidered Sunset - one old lady who is concerned about what has happened to her friend, another old lady - but other than that basic premise, a good dose of suspense, and a strong sense of place in both novels, they are very different.
Sal is still tending her garden, caring for her strong-willed 4 year-old daughter Maddie, and working as a private detective. Helping an 80-something year old woman find out whether her friend is being properly treated in an aged care home puts Sal in even more danger than tackling organised crime did in Looking For Trouble.
I'm not sure what I think of the revelations about what was happening in the aged care home and the psych hospital, and one bad guy's attempt to hush it all up. A bit too melodramatic for me.
The twist in the tail of the secondary mystery was very neat, though.
March 12, 2015
Second book in the Sal Kilkenny series. A gripping story centred around the mysterious decline in an elderly woman, Lily's, health. Sal is hired by Lily's old friend, who is mystified as to what is happening to her friend. A nail-biting ending. I really like the feisty Sal character. You have to love a Private Detective who loves to go to the library to borrow crime novels!
June 22, 2013
The writing style was a bit abrupt and disjointed at times, but the characterisation made up for that. Quick moving thriller, interesting observations on societal treatment of the elderly and a nice twist at the end.
April 1, 2012
Cracking read. Implausible in places but altogether very fast paced and enjoyable. Love Cath Staincliffe; brilliant writer.
June 28, 2014
Fairly short, easy to read crime thriller, featuring an wonderful indomitable elderly woman client of PI Sal Kilkenny
May 12, 2013
Great book story moved at a fast pace from beginning to end and a superb cliffhanger at the end!
November 14, 2015
a gentle mystery with a mildly violent ending
March 4, 2016
Good story.
August 15, 2025
Really enjoyed the majority of this book. Found it too high octane at the end though.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews