Reviews

• Jack Stryker is an interesting character. He is set in ways, but not annoyingly so. The plot is good and Paula Gosling has a way with the language. Ms. Gosling’s books got lost in my books, and I am delighted to find her eBooks available, especially for books I missed. She is worth a read.

• I read this book when it first came out and bought it in 2013 and read it again. The thriller part IS fairly lightweight stuff but I still loved it. It has witty dialogue and convincing, attractive characters set in a university campus. I will reread it again soon.

• Although written in 1985, and therefore bereft of modern technology, this is a good, old fashioned detective story, with the police doing things the hard way (ie not sitting watching CCTV footage or trawling the Internet for crime) but finding bodies, interviewing suspects, and fighting the snowy winter weather and freezing temperatures to determine who's been killing college staff in some not very nice ways. There's a female lecturer, trying hard to forget how she first met the male police Lieutenant, many years ago, when she was a student protester, madly in love with the man she still protects and defends, even now captivated by his charms. Sadly, still sheltered in the world of Academe, she has never really grown up, seeming happy to go along with the current day students, who view the police as 'Fascist pigs' - amazing how that's never changed down the years! Her naivety and dislike of the police, and Stryker in particular, and her automatic defence of her colleague, without any rational thought, are irritating, as is her self-acknowledged-at-the-time stupidity in putting herself into positions courting danger, but doing it regardless. Somehow, nevertheless, the murderer is discovered, and Jack shall have Jill, and it ends up being a very satisfactory story. The main characters, who will turn up again in the other Jack Stryker books, are extremely well-drawn, and you really want to know more about them, and how their relationships develop. If you're prepared to accept that the world was very different nearly 40 years ago, that how people lived and thought about social (and anti-social) behaviour were of their period, and that people then would be just as appalled by 21st Century views, language and behaviour as some people today will inevitably be by the views expressed then, then you should enjoy this book.

• I love Paula Gosling books - a really good mystery

• Always loved her writing

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