Crying Out Loud

January 9, 2012
The vicissitudes of child care complicate a criminal investigation in Staincliffe’s solid eighth mystery featuring Manchester PI Sal Kilkenny (after 2007’s Missing). When someone leaves a baby girl in a stroller on Sal’s doorstep with a note asking her to tend to the infant and not call the police, Sal takes the child in, much to the dismay of Ray, her housemate recently turned lover; Ray’s young son, Tom; and Sal’s eight-year-old daughter, Maddie. Meanwhile, Sal must re-examine a murder case after petty crook Damien Beswick, who confessed to killing the lover of one of Sal’s clients, recants in prison. While the baby drama could easily have veered this installment toward the maudlin, Staincliffe’s steady pacing, her painfully human and flawed characters, and her lush descriptions of the English countryside in autumn keep the pages turning. Genre fans will smile when Sal turns for consolation to a Kate Atkinson novel.

February 15, 2012
How can you solve a murder if the baby needs changing? Manchester private eye Sal Kilkenny, a single mother living with her young daughter and Ray, a roommate-turned-lover, and his young son, isn't at all sure she wants to take on the job of proving that Damien, who confessed to murdering Charles Carter, is really innocent. Damien's sister thinks so, Charlie's mistress Libby isn't sure, and now Damien himself has recanted his confession. Sal barely has time to set up a prison visit with Damien, though, because someone has left a baby on her doorstep with a note promising to explain matters later. Ray wants the baby turned over to Social Services, the kids think of the tot as a new toy, and Sal broods and labors to fit nappy changes in between murder enquiries and vice versa. Damien, his memory fogged by drugs, is little help in recounting what put him in jail. Before Sal makes any headway, he hangs himself in his cell. Painstakingly, she reviews the alibis of everyone from Charlie's betrayed wife to his emotionally bereft teenage son to his mistress, now the mother of his other child. His ex-business partner, a con man, appears and attacks Sal. Is the foundling on her doorstep a by-blow of Ray's? He's gone incommunicado and can't be asked. The kids and relationship tension take up much of Sal's time, but detailed scrutiny of the murder timetable upends several alibis and seems to vindicate Damien, leaving Sal free to connect with the baby's mum. Emotionally gritty, though it's hard to admire Sal's taste in men or her pedestrian investigative methods (Missing, 2007, etc.).

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February 1, 2012
PI Sal Kilkenny is trying to find out what really happened when her client's husband was brutally murdered. The young man who was convicted and jailed for the crime, albeit on the slimmest evidence, has now retracted his confession. But the case takes a backseat when Sal arrives home one day and finds a stroller with a tiny infant on her doorstep. Of the mother, there is no sign, but a cryptic note asks Sal to take care of the child and everything will be explained. Of course, Sal can't possibly leave the baby, so she takes her in, much to the consternation of her live-in lover, his son, and Sal's daughter. Trying to juggle caring for the infant with her current investigation proves physically and emotionally exhausting. Much tension ensues in the Kilkenny household, as Sal ponders if the baby's parents could be her lover and his ex-wife. A smart, feisty heroine and a plot full of unexpected twists and equal doses of humor and suspense add up to an appealing read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)