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Clare Burtonall #2
Prey Dancing
This second installment in the new mystery series the critics have called cause for rejoicing (Kirkus Reviews) sends doctor-cum-detective Clare Burtonall to the streets of London's underworld.
- GenresMystery
288 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1998
25 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Gash
93 books73 followersJohn Grant is an English crime writer, who writes under the pen name Jonathan Gash. He is the author of the Lovejoy series of novels. He wrote the novel The Incomer under the pen name Graham Gaunt.
Grant is a doctor by training and worked as a general practitioner and pathologist. He served in the British Army and attained the rank of Major in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was head of bacteriology at the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for the University of London between 1971 and 1988.
Grant won the John Creasey Award in 1977 for his first Lovejoy novel, The Judas Pair. He is also the author of a series of medical thrillers featuring the character Dr. Clare Burtonall.
Grant lives outside Colchester in Essex, the setting for many of his novels. He has also been published in Postscripts.
Grant is a doctor by training and worked as a general practitioner and pathologist. He served in the British Army and attained the rank of Major in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was head of bacteriology at the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for the University of London between 1971 and 1988.
Grant won the John Creasey Award in 1977 for his first Lovejoy novel, The Judas Pair. He is also the author of a series of medical thrillers featuring the character Dr. Clare Burtonall.
Grant lives outside Colchester in Essex, the setting for many of his novels. He has also been published in Postscripts.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 4, 2026
This book which I thought was a stand alone when I picked it up, is actually the second book in the Clare Burtonall Series. It is a dark unsettling story that takes readers into the world of prostitutes, drug gangs and white color criminals.
Dr. Burtonall is a cardiologist working in a large city hospital. While on the evening shift, she meets Marie, a young drug addict dying of AIDS who in her last breath asks Clare to deliver a message to her boyfriend Jase. The message is simply one word: “Forgive”.
Determined to deliver on her promise, Clare sets out to find Jase, a search that leads her into the city’s dark underworld. Her guide in this dangerous and violent environment is Bonn, a sensitive, high priced male prostitute who at one time was training to be a priest. He lives in the chaos of illicit drugs, brutal violence and his female customers, but moves easily and confidently in this seamy and sordid world. Clare and Bonn make an unusual pair. She is respectable, intelligent, conventional and decent, negotiating her way in an unfamiliar world, while he moves nonchalantly through the seamiest parts of the city, existing by his own rules and largely untouched by the ugliness around him.
Jase is a member of a local gang but they abandoned him during a violent double homicide and he is determined to get his revenge. A psychotic criminal, he is plotting revenge on everyone who has wronged him and that includes Clare, because she did not cure his girlfriend, Marie.
This narrative is filled with English street slang, which at times made it difficult to understand everything that was going on. I also did not find the nature of the relationship between Clare, the decent educated physician and Bonn, the male prostitute to be credible. It was not only strange; it was not believable.
The narrative is bleak, the characters unlikeable and the story is not just edgy, but desolate and depressing. It proved too gloomy for me and I did not enjoy it.
Dr. Burtonall is a cardiologist working in a large city hospital. While on the evening shift, she meets Marie, a young drug addict dying of AIDS who in her last breath asks Clare to deliver a message to her boyfriend Jase. The message is simply one word: “Forgive”.
Determined to deliver on her promise, Clare sets out to find Jase, a search that leads her into the city’s dark underworld. Her guide in this dangerous and violent environment is Bonn, a sensitive, high priced male prostitute who at one time was training to be a priest. He lives in the chaos of illicit drugs, brutal violence and his female customers, but moves easily and confidently in this seamy and sordid world. Clare and Bonn make an unusual pair. She is respectable, intelligent, conventional and decent, negotiating her way in an unfamiliar world, while he moves nonchalantly through the seamiest parts of the city, existing by his own rules and largely untouched by the ugliness around him.
Jase is a member of a local gang but they abandoned him during a violent double homicide and he is determined to get his revenge. A psychotic criminal, he is plotting revenge on everyone who has wronged him and that includes Clare, because she did not cure his girlfriend, Marie.
This narrative is filled with English street slang, which at times made it difficult to understand everything that was going on. I also did not find the nature of the relationship between Clare, the decent educated physician and Bonn, the male prostitute to be credible. It was not only strange; it was not believable.
The narrative is bleak, the characters unlikeable and the story is not just edgy, but desolate and depressing. It proved too gloomy for me and I did not enjoy it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review