The Dead Sit Round in a Ring: Detective Stella Mooney #1 - Softcover

David Lawrence is an acclaimed poet and TV script writer. He lives in Barnes, West London and is currently working on his second Stella Mooney novel, NOTHING LIKE THE NIGHT.

*Starred Review* The titular clique of elderly suicides may be the gentlest thing that Detective Stella Mooney encounters in the whole of this riveting thriller. Trouble is, one of them wasn't invited to the party: a dealer in morbid "murderabilia" whose life has been snipped short with surgical precision by a hand more skilled than his own. This is Ivo Perec, formerly of the Bosnian killing fields and now showing the London hooligans a thing or two about brutality as he restlessly awaits employment in some imminent bloodbath obscurely linked to the brisk refugee flesh trade. Tenacious Mooney takes blows from man and beast, brushing off the scars and tinnitus, but not the psychological toll of the daily descent into a city so forlorn that the grisly predations of a cold-blooded Serbian mass-murderer are remarkable only for their efficiency. Lawrence's spare, keen-edged prose ploughs with irresistible force through this grim hellscape, churning up shards of dark poetry in its wake. From the spontaneous dialogue to the clear, convincing procedure and the menacing atmosphere, there isn't a single false note in this striking debut, which earns pride of place deep in the darkest circle of noir, down past Ian Rankin and John Harvey to the shadows where lurk Ken Bruen and Derek Raymond. David Wright
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