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Description
In Catherine Aird's Stiff News, a letter received by an old woman's son after her death alerts Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan that one woman's death by natural causes in a local nursing home may actually be murder. But that is just the beginning of the odd goings-on in this nursing home catering to former members of a WWII regiment.Tags
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Member Reviews
I thought it was new but I had read it before. Another standard Sloane story. Fun, nothing much there. And the non-recurring characters, while as usual less cardboard than the recurring ones, are largely _unpleasant_ in this one. Everyone has secrets and is willing to harm others to protect them - ick. Not one of my favorites. Maybe that's why I'd forgotten it enough that I thought it was new.
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The Calleshire Chronicles (Sloan and Crosby Canon) by Catherine Aird
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Author Information
48+ Works 5,426 Members
Catherine Aird is the author of more than twenty crime novels and story collections, most of which feature Detective Chief Inspector C. D. Sloan. She holds an honorary M.A. from the University of Kent and was made an M.B.E. She lives in England
Series
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1998
- People/Characters
- William Edward Crosby (Detective Constable); Christopher Dennis Sloan (Detective Inspector, C. D., Seedy); Superintendent Leeyes; Hector Smithson Dabbe (Doctor); Mrs. Maisie Carruthers; Ned Carruthers (show all 25); Stella Carruthers; Clarissa Powell; Amanda Powell; Gertrude Powell; Brigadier Hamish MacIver; Lionel Powell; Julia Powell; Miss Margot Ritchie; Dr. Angus Browne; Rector Adrian Brailsford; Todd Morton; Captain Peter Markyate; Locombe-Stableford; Lisa Haines; Hazel Finch; Miss Henrietta Bentley; Mrs. Morag McBeath; Judge Calum Gillespie; Mrs. Elizabeth Forbes
- Important places
- Manor at Almstone, Calleshire, England, UK
- Epigraph
- Messenger: Labienus -
This is stiff news -- hath, with his Parthian force,
Extended Asia from Euphrates;
His conquering banner shook from Syria
To Lydia and to Ionia
Antony and Cleopatra, ... (show all)Act I Sc. ii - Dedication
- For David Barton with love
- First words
- 'No,' said Mrs Maisie Carruthers somewhat breathlessly.
- Quotations
- ‘Since the coat has absolutely no intrinsic value, Inspector, I must regretfully conclude that the choice lies between an outbreak of gesture politics or the damage being the work of a mind deranged.’
Sloan tried a... (show all)nother tack. ‘And which would you think the more likely?’
‘Malice or madness? I’ve no idea at all, Inspector.’
‘Really,’ she exclaimed, stumping into the kitchen and plonking herself down on the nearest chair, ‘this place is getting worse than Nightmare Abbey. Whatever next?’
A grammatical purist might have wondered why... (show all) Miss Bentley hadn't said ‘whoever’ rather than ‘whatever’ but the former headteacher belonged to the Superintendent Leeyes school of taking bad news as a personal affront rather than as an occasion for sympathy for the victim.
‘What condition?’
‘He's got a bad heart as well as the leg injuries he got in the war which put him in his wheelchair.’
‘Ah.’ If there was one thing which every policeman knew it was that families we... (show all)re bad for every medical condition, but especially for heart ones. Legs were less important.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 127
- Popularity
- 255,887
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.55)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 12
- ASINs
- 2
