Regular marked price: $23.95Discount Price: $17.96
Cost Savings: $5.99 (25%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780307377036
ISBN number: 0307377032
Label: Pantheon
Manufacturer: Pantheon
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: July 15, 2008
Publishing house: Pantheon
Release Date: July 15, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 93074
Studio: Pantheon
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
When the badly decayed body of an elderly woman is unearthed, Detective Chief Inspector Mark Lapslie and his sergeant, Emma Bradbury, are called in on the case. The body provides only two mysterious clues to the identity of the murderer: someone with a deadly knowledge of household plants used shears to clip the fingertips off the corpse's right hand. But this dearth of evidence is not Lapslie's only problem. He's just returned to the force after a year of relative isolation, trying to avoid the worst symptoms of his synasethsia, a neurological condition that causes him to 'taste' sound and that makes his life as complicated as any crime he's been charged with solving. Now he's flooded again--not only with the convolution of senses that can drive him nearly mad but also with the increasing convolutions of the case. The murder appears to be the work of a serial killer, and the investigation is leading in a direction that could be extremely detrimental to Lapslie's career--if not to his very life.
Razor-sharp, viscerally descriptive, mesmerizingly eerie and entertaining--and with one of the most clever, ruthless, and sympathetic villains to appear in ages--Still Waters is a stunning start to an exciting new series.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
It takes a lot for a new writer to break into the crowded genre of British police procedurals. Even a good story may not be enough. But a good story with a badly damaged-but-redeemable Detective Chief Inspector might just do the trick. In this case, the damage is a doozie! DCI Mark Lapslie has just been called back from "indefinite sick leave" because he has a form of synaesthesia that causes him to taste sounds, e.g., his sergeant's voice tastes to him like lemon with a hint of grapefruit, but the voices of his children made him sick. And the voices of his colleagues at the busy station house taste like uncooked meat. Thus, he lives alone in as much silence as he can manage. He is called back to work in a last-ditch endeavor to see if there is any way to create a useful place for him on the force before putting him on permanent leave. And he lands in the middle of a strange series of deaths of lonely old women.
Coincidence? Murder? Serial killer? One leads to another and Lapslie and his sergeant always seem to be just a step behind. And the question nags: "Could a woman really visit so many horrors on these sweet, abandoned souls?" It makes you want to call up your elderly aunts and grandmothers to make sure they're OK and haven't been befriended by any overly solicitous do-gooders! I really like Lapslie and Co. and the writing is crisp, with a fine pace. Make no mistakes, though. This is also a tough murder mystery and not-so-nice things happen to presumably undeserving people. This is a good very first mystery in what looks like a promising series.
Rated by buyers -
This is a good mistery using a new type of detective: he has syncinesia, the capacity of seeing sounds and tasting images, and because of this he has a rough tyme in his profession and is sidelined when a series of unusual crimes, suggesting a serial killer, happens. The investigation and the very unusual serial killer suceed each other in different chapters until the dramatic final, and is this the weakest part of this nice mistery: there was no need of the final confrontation except if the author wants to sell movie rights. I enjoyed the book, and was amazed and chilled by this serial killer - anyone that reads the book will be tense afterwards...
Rated by buyers -
"Books about digging up dead bodies and finding clues have become popular. This time the clues are shears used to clip the fingertips and household plants. McCreary is on the cutting edge."
Rated by buyers 
-
If your idea of fun is reading how a hyperactive six year old girl gets the fingers of her right hand loped off one as punishment for interrupting a tea party - this is the book for you! And that's just the prologue!
I couldn't read any more. It was just too creepy.
Rated by buyers -
Detective Chief Inspector Mark Lapslie of the Essex PD is a solitary man, but not by choice. Living with a rare condition known as synaesthesia, he can literally taste sound: "Part of him had expected a call. He'd been tasting strawberries very faintly all day." Married and the father of twins, Mark has seen his marriage disintegrate, the birth of twins accelerating the already disturbing confluence of tastes/sounds, the children exacerbating a strained relationship. Called to investigate an unusual case after six months on leave, Lapslie is once more assaulted by the overwhelming flavors of a busy department. Add to his dilemma an interesting pathologist, a young, attractive detective Sergeant, Emma Bradbury and a putative serial killer preying on lonely elderly women and the plot yields an unusual thriller defined as much by its characters as the facts.
The author's penchant for unusual description adds to the flavor of the novel, "hidden behind the impressive new façade the same way the ladies of Baudelaire's time used to hide their pox-ridden faces behind caked layers of makeup". Granted, the prologue is off-putting, an extremely grisly passage that is deeply disturbing, but the tale settles thereafter into a more sedate, albeit deceptive, "Arsenic and Old Lace" ambiance that belies the shocking motive at the heart of the crime. Tapping into the vulnerability of very lonely elderly women, London villages are sprinkled with those time has forgotten, living out their final days in obscurity, vague ailments intruding on the quietude of late-afternoon tea, carefully-tended gardens and early bedtimes. Such women fall easy prey to a particular predator, a kindly helper who offers assistance but delivers death.
Eerily seductive, the novel mixes the extraordinary- a vicious, patient killer- with the minutiae of days lived past the prime of life, old photographs and memories the closest friends of those with no family to care for them. One could almost be lulled into a false sense of security. But that would be foolish. Embedded in this story of a detective in search of an elusive murderer is a mysterious agency's hidden agenda, one that eventually threatens Lapslie's career should he not cooperate. In layer upon layer of provocative prose, the author lends a philosophical bent to nature's aberrations, whether the mind of a murderer or the tormented senses of the detective in "a bizarre mélange of flavors... matched in real life by a child mixing their dinner and dessert up on the same plate". McCrery constructs a compelling house of cards built on murder, treachery and the random acts of fate. Luan Gaines/ 2008.
Find other books like this one:
