Part of Series
Meet Monika Paniatowski, an ambitious new DCI with everything to prove—and everything to lose. Two severed hands. One newly promoted detective with her hands full. Monika Paniatowski can’t wait to land her first case as detective chief inspector. And, as it turns out, she won’t have to. On her first day, a woman’s severed hand is found in a leafy park. Monika races to the scene, determined to stay one step ahead of the gutter press. They don’t like women, and they don’t like Poles, and it’s no secret they don’t think Monika is up to the job. All the evidence points to Stan Szymborska, the victim’s downtrodden husband. He shares Monika’s heritage, and rumour has it, he had every reason to want his wife dead. But Monika’s not so sure. Something tells her there’s more to this case than meets the eye. She wants to trust her instincts. But is the powerful chemistry between her and the prime suspect leading her off track? The clock is ticking to catch a ruthless killer . . . Then a second severed hand is delivered straight to the newspaper. Discover a brilliantly twisty mystery series set in the 1970s—when it was tough to be a woman in a man’s world.
Author
A pseudonym used by Alan Rustage. Sally Spencer is a pen name, first adopted when the author (actually called Alan Rustage) was writing sagas and it was almost obligatory that a woman's name appeared on the cover (other authors like Emma Blair and Mary Jane Staples are also men). Before becoming a full-time writer, he was a teacher. In 1978-79 he was working in Iran and witnessed the fall of the Shah (see the Blog for what it was like to live through a revolution). He got used to having rifles - and, one occasion, a rocket launcher - pointed at him by both soldiers and revolutionaries, but he was never entirely comfortable with it. He lived in Madrid for over twenty years, and still considers it the most interesting and exciting city he has ever visited, but for the last few years he has opted for a quieter life in the seaside town of Calpe, on the Costa Blanca. His first series of books were historical sagas set in Cheshire (where he grew up) and London. They were very popular with his English readers, but his American readers find the dialect something of a strain. He has written twenty books featuring DCI Woodend (a character based partly on a furniture dealer he used to play dominoes with) and ten (so far!) about Woodend's protegé Monika Paniatowski. His DI Sam Blackstone books are set in Victorian/Edwardian London, New York and Russia, and the Inspector Paco Ruiz books have as their backdrop the Spanish Civil War. Alan is a competitive games player who likes bridge and pub quizzes. It is only by enforcing iron discipline that he doesn't play video games all the time. He now lives on Spain's Costa Blanca.
