PERILS OF THE NIGHT (Hardcover)

Laura is an excellent reporter, fighting to establish herself in a man's world which means getting assignments off the feature page and on the front page. Michael worries that Laura's skills may someday encourage the London papers to entice her away from Yorkshire. But Laura has a grandmother living in Bradford with whom she is very close, so she's not likely to take off soon.

Sometimes Laura's investigative reporting efforts lead to conflicts with Michael, a relative newcomer on the local police force, who is trying to establish credibility with his new employers. Both Laura and Michael seem mature enough to deal with the job-related conflicts that can affect their personal relationship, but from time to time tempers flare.

Hall's plot device in PERILS is interesting--both main characters frequently turn up at the same job location because something of interest to both the newspaper and the local police occurs. In PERILS both become involved in the murder of a college student who turned tricks on the side before one of her clients apparently killed her. Laura had been developing an undercover piece on the exploitation of women prostitutes before the murder. Michael becomes involved when murder and prostitution intersect.

This is a short book--220 pages and can be read in one sitting, but it's rich and filling as a chocolate eclair.

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Bradford Gazette Editor Ted Grant assigns reporter Laura Ackroyd int obtaining insider information on the feud between the town's prostitutes and its new Asian residents. Laura dresses as a prostitute and begins by seemingly soliciting customers on the Yorkshire streets. She gathers interesting information from Sherry the prostitute just prior to being busted by the police.

Laura feels a bit mortified that her lover police chief Michael Thackeray sees her in her new role behind bars. However, her investigative juices quickly replace that queasy feeling when she learns that someone murdered a university student Louise Brownlee on her street corner that very night. Michael and Laura seek the truth behind the student-hooker murder, which may have been an act of a vigilante, an unhappy customer, or just a mindless murder.

What sets aside a Patricia Hall novel from the run of the mill English police procedural is the detail and depth to the characterizations. Though her who-done-its are well written, they are no better than most of the sub-genre entries. However, the brilliantly defined emotions, motivations, and interpersonal relationships propel the audience into non-stop reading until they finish the novel. This trademark of Ms. Hall is in abundance in her latest mystery, PERILS OF THE NIGHT. After perusing this novel, readers will want to obtain Ms. Hall's previous tales such as the Thackeray-Ackroyd tale, DEAD OF WINTER, which too is an entertaining story.

Harriet Klausner

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