Paula Gosling

I enjoyed this, it's the first Paula Gosling I've read and I was expecting less than I got. The writing is good and there is depth to the plot. The primary character is an American woman living in England. Shortly after her husband dies in a traffic accident she begins receiving frightening phone calls that eventually escalate to threats to her and to her young son. While the characters are a bit flat, Gosling does a good job at building suspense. While I did guess "whodunit" there were some good surprises along the way.… (more)

I really enjoyed my reading of Running Duck by Paula Gosling. This is an older crime story that won the John Creasey Award for the best first novel in 1974 and makes an appearance on the CWA 100 Best Crime Novels list . A young woman ad executive called Claire Randall happens to get face to face with a professional killer and could be in a position to identify him. His response is to come after her and remove that possibility. After two attempts that go wrong, the police put the pieces together and realize she needs immediate protection. Ex-army sniper, Detective Mike Malcheck is assigned to the case and he quickly realizes that this international assassin is getting information from someone connected to the police. He and Claire take to the road in an attempt to draw the murderer out.

Running Duck was an exciting and fast paced story that gives the reader a “love on the run” story line that has moments of humor along with plenty of excitement as the two snipers take turns playing “cat and mouse” with each other. The various settings send the reader on a mini-trip of California, from the Sierra Nevada mountains to the Redwood forests and visiting all these familiar places made the book even more fun for me. Unfortunately a rather cheesy film called “Cobra” is supposedly based on this book, although they have completely different plots. The film stars Sylvester Stallone which guarantees that I will never watch it, but this debut novel is well worth the read.… (more)

I registered this book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14694380

Pretty absorbing thriller.

A military plane is transporting a small number of passengers when it is hijacked. The small crew is found, drugged, but there is no sign of the passengers.

They have been taken to a remote area in Scandinavia, in a luxury house set out alone in the snow. It is so bitterly cold that there is no way for the prisoners to escape; they would die within an hour without protection. Their shoes have been taken. There is plenty of food in the house, and water, and warm bedrooms and living areas. It is a comfortable place to be held.

Meanwhile, the father of one of the kidnapped, a high-ranking military officer, has been contacted with demands. He is given an odd list of demands, some of which are easy and others not so much.

In both places people are trying to figure out who is the kidnapper and what the point is. We get to follow the trials and tragedies to the bitter end. Bitter cold end.… (more)

Paula Gosling can write at least three very different styles of mysteries. This is a classic British village mystery (though definitely not a "cosy") solved by Chief Inspector Luke Abbott. To some extent it follows the classic romance pattern in which a woman is caught between two men --in this case Jennifer Eames, a woman doctor coming home to in take over part of a general practice long handled by the uncle who raised her, caught between Luke Abbott, with whom she had had a teen romance when they were both poor young people growing up in the town, and Mark Peacock, the "son of the manor" , whose family has lost money as Jennifer and Luke have gained at least solid professional status. Mark also has mental issues for which he is supposed to be medicated,so when a series of three women are murdered, the second being his mother, he is an obvious suspect, though not the only one.… (more)