ISBN: 978-0-9566144-3-8
Published by Pilrig Press, 2012
DS Louisa Townsend from Edinburgh is an engaging new detective who is as impetuous as she is ambitious, with an innate sense of justice at her core. She is temporarily working on the island of Tarawa, a remote coral atoll in the middle of the Pacific, where nothing ever happens. Then a mutilated body is found. She is asked to find the killer. She marvels at the simplicity of the task – after all, how difficult can it be to find the murderer on a tiny island with only one road? But nothing on Tarawa is what it seems. There is a rumour the victim’s eyes were eaten as part of a macabre, cannibalistic ritual and a second body is found and a third death looks suspicious. With no forensics on Tarawa and no one telling the truth Louisa worries she may be out of her depth.
Reviews
|Set against an exotic backdrop, this thriller has a complex heroine who’s as fragile as she is feisty – and who must tackle culture clashes and family ties as well as crime if she’s to survive…. ” – Karen Campbell
“Marianne Wheelaghan is a great story teller … This is a hugely enjoyable book, complex and engaging …” – Kath Middleton
 | Marianne WheelaghanI grew up in the 60s, one of nine children and of dual Scottish-German heritage. We were relatively poor and didn’t do holidays as such. Possibly because of this, and possibly to get some piece and quiet from my larger-than-life siblings, I used to spend a lot of time hiding in quiet corners and making up stories in my head set in faraway places. This is probably when my love of storytelling began. I also spent a lot of time wondering who I was, more Scottish than German or visa versa. This may be why I like to explore themes in my writing to do with ‘home’ and ‘place’ as well as ‘identity’. My first novel, The Blue Suitcase (ISBN 9780956614407) is a refugee fiction, set in Silesia, Germany in the 1930/40s and based on my mother’s true life story. It tells the harrowing and much under-told story of the second world war from the perspective of an ordinary German Christian girl who becomes displaced. The crime novels, Food of Ghosts ( 978-0-9566144-3-8) and The Shoeshine Killer (978-0-9927234-3-9), are set in the lesser developed countries of Kiribati and Fiji. Through the telling of conventional crime stories in unconventional settings, I hope to bring these faraway places and people to life and show that beneath very different surfaces we all share similar wants and desires. |
