The Ring of Death

April 26, 2010
Fans of The Dead Hand of History (2009) will welcome Spencer’s second mystery featuring Det. Chief Insp. Monika Paniatowski set in 1970s Lancashire. Early one morning in the woods outside Whitebridge, a dog breeder discovers the naked, mutilated body of a man in his mid-30s. Particularly shocking is that the dead man is on his hands and knees, rigor mortis keeping him in position. Monika and her team get to work on the case and soon learn the victim is Andrew Adair—a recently discharged army officer who was one of the paras involved in the notorious 1972 Bloody Sunday killings in Northern Ireland. Before the team makes much headway, a similar murder occurs, and Monika realizes she must figure out what message the killer is trying to send with the posed corpses—and fast—before the violence escalates. A witty protagonist and a likable supporting cast redeem what is otherwise a formulaic police procedural.

May 15, 2010
Beset by spies both official and unofficial, DCI Monika Paniatowski (The Dead Hand of History, 2009, etc.) investigates a series of murders as shocking as they are deliberate.

Whoever killed Andy Adair went to great lengths to set the stage, first slitting his throat, then draping his corpse over a crate, and finally posing the unclothed body, now stiff with rigor mortis, on hands and knees in the woods to be found by habitual dog-walker Harold Toynbee. Why the killer went to such trouble is up to Monika to find out, with only the help of DI Colin Beresford and still-wet-behind-the-ears DC Jack Crane. So Chief Constable Baxter details DS Paul Cousins, fresh off psychiatric leave, to her team. DS Walker, her previous bagman, has been promoted, although his rise in rank does nothing to stop his determination to undermine Monika. So he secretly teams with Mike Traynor of the Lancashire Evening Chronicle to keep tabs on Monika's progress in hope of tripping her up. But the two amateur spies have nothing on sinister, silver-haired Mr. Forsyth, who comes all the way from London to tell Monika to watch her step. The entry of the secret service into her case rattles Monika but also motivates her. As she redoubles her efforts, so does the killer, littering the Lancashire landscape with naked corpses and sending a message only the new DCI can decode.

Paniatowski continues to prove herself a worthy successor to Charlie Woodend as Spencer delivers another first-rate whodunit.

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Starred review from June 1, 2010
A man is tortured, murdered, and left in a gruesome pose in the woods outside Whitebridge, England, and DCI Monika Paniatowski's team catches the case. Adding to Paniatowski's difficulties as a female Chief Inspector is the assignment of a new sergeant with issues. The possibility that the team may be up against the IRA and the return of her personal nemesis, Mr. Forsyth (Home Office or MI5), causes Paniatowski to question her decisions. VERDICT This second entry in Spencer's spinoff series from her Charlie Woodend mysteries (after "The Dead Hand of History") grabs the reader on the first page and never lets go until the shocker of an ending. Like Lynda La Plante's DCI Jane Tennison in the "Prime Suspect" series, Paniatowski must deal with the negative climate found in a male-dominated police establishment, Heartbreaking and heart-wrenching, this is Spencer at her best. [See Prepub Mystery, "LJ" 1/10.]

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2010
After Spencer retired her delightfully irascible DCI Charlie Woodend, most fans sensed it was the end of an era. But in Monika Paniatowski, Woodends replacement as DCI, Spencer has created a new protagonist who might even best Woodend. Paniatowski has overcome a horrific childhood to reach her elevated position and is focused on filling Woodends very big shoes. Unfortunately, its 1970s Britain, and most of Monikas male colleagues believe a womans place is at home. But her colleagues resentment is the least of her worries when a mans mutilated body is found near Whitebridge, posed on hands and knees and stark naked. Clearly, the killer was trying to deliver a message, but Paniatowski and her team cant begin to guess what it might be. Then two more bodies are found, also naked and posed, and the stakes are raised still further. As usual, Spencer produces a hugely entertaining police procedural, but its her keen perception of human nature and her ability to draw flawed but sympathetic characters that make this extension of the Woodend series such a standout.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)