‘Bloodline’ by Priscilla Masters

Published by Severn House,
7 January 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-4483-1476-8 (HB)

The day that Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy has been longing for has arrived, after almost a year on sick leave, Joanna’s sergeant and dear friend, Detective Sergeant Mike Korpanski, is due to return to work. Joanna’s chief worry is that the injuries Mike received in a serious accident will have left him permanently incapacitated. She is relieved that, although Mike is still on limited duties until he is fully fit, he is still the same reliable, supportive friend he always was.

After a day dealing with two sad but unthreatening crimes, Joanna is lulled into thinking the only thing she has to worry about is her stepdaughter’s forthcoming graduation. As Joanna’s stepdaughter still blames her for the breakup of her parents’ marriage, Joanna has accepted that she and her baby son will be excluded from the event.

However, just a few miles from where Joanna, her husband and baby live, an elderly man has been taken hostage by an armed intruder. Joseph Holden lives alone in an ancient, secluded house called Cloud Mansion, which overlooks Rudyard Lake. Apart from his twice-weekly cleaning lady, Joseph’s only regular contact is Doreen Caputo who also lives near the lake and walks her dog around it every day. Doreen always stops to have a brief chat with Joseph and is concerned when he talks to her through the closed front door and calls her Mrs Caputo when they have been on first name terms for years.

Joseph attempts to walk the fine line between warning Doreen that something is wrong and not alarming or enraging his captor, aware that the man is armed with a high-powered rifle and Doreen’s life is at risk, as well as his own. After some initial doubts, Doreen succeeds in convincing the police that there is something seriously wrong at Joseph’s house and the police manage to establish contact with the intruder. However, the man insists that the only person he will negotiate with is Joanna. This horrifies Joanna, whose only experience of hostage negotiation is a four-day course, undertaken to enhance her cv and please her senior officer. To her surprise, from the start, the intruder seems to know more about Joanna than she can account for, and he also seems to know every move in the negotiation playbook. Even when she receives advice from the tutor on her negotiation course, Joanna feels the man is always one step ahead of her.

The situation grows tenser as armed police officers surround the house, ready to go in and capture the intruder. Joanna becomes acutely aware that not only is she responsible for saving the life of an elderly and potentially sick man, but also, she is afraid that the man’s detailed knowledge about her may place those she loves in danger.

Bloodline is the sixteenth book in the series featuring Joanna Piercy, but it works well as a stand-alone novel. The core characters are engaging, and the plot is complex and well-paced. It is a cleverly constructed novel that leaves both the reader and the central characters wondering what is justice and how is it best served. A fascinating read, which I recommend.
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Reviewer: Carol Westron

Priscilla Masters was born in Halifax, and brought up in South Wales, one of seven multi-racial children adopted by an orthopaedic surgeon and his Classics graduate wife. Priscilla trained as a registered nurse in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. She moved to Staffordshire in the 1970s, had an antiques business for a while and two sons. She started writing in the 1980s in response to an aunt asking her what she was going to do with her life! Winding up the Serpent was her first Joanna Piercy story, published in 1995.  Although that series is still continuing the latest Crooked Street published 2016, she has also written several medical standalones and a new series featuring coroner Martha Gunn, set in Shrewsbury. Her latest book is An Imperfect Truth, a psychological thriller featuring Dr Claire Roget who is a forensic psychiatrist who has some very unpredictable patients. It is set in Stoke on Trent.

http://www.priscillamasters.co.uk/ 

Carol Westron is a successful author and a Creative Writing teacher.  Her crime novels are set both in contemporary and Victorian times.  Her first book The Terminal Velocity of Cats was published in 2013. Since then, she has since written 8 further mysteries.
Carol recently gave an interview to Mystery People. interview

www.carolwestron.com
To read a review of Carol latest book click on the title
Delivering Lazerus