Shooting Star - Hardcover

Temple, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847245900 ISBN 13: 9781847245908

Publisher: Quercus Publishing, 2008

Synopsis

Anne Carson, fifteen, beautiful, and wayward is abducted. Her rich family has closed ranks and summoned Frank Calder, ex-soldier and sacked police hostage negotiator. They want him to deliver the ransom money to the kidnappers. Frank wants them to call in the law, but the family refuses, since police bungling nearly cost the life of another Carson child kidnapped years before. But are the two kidnappings connected? And is greed the motivation? Revenge? Or could it be something else? To find out, Frank Calder must go beyond his brief. As Frank feverishly searches for suspects in the web of Carson family businesses and deals, marriages and indiscretions, rivalries and intrigues, he knows that if his instincts are wrong, the girl will surely die.

About this title

Review:

It's always good to be the first person to discover talent -- and despite his immense success in Australia (he is that country's pre-eminent crime writer), Peter Temple has been something of hidden treasure for British and American readers. But Temple's days as a hidden treasure are disappearing, as more and more readers discover just how distinctive a writer he is (crime celebrity admirers include Val McDermid and Mark Billingham).

Temple (who won the 2007 Crime Writers’ Association Dagger with The Broken Shore) has, in Shooting Star, another winner. Prickly, fifteen-year-old Anne Carson is abducted -- to the horror of her well-heeled family. Disgraced police negotiator Frank Calder is commissioned to pay the ransom, but he has other ideas – there was another child kidnapping some years before, and Frank is convinced there is a connection. But the death of Anne Carson may be imminent.

All the things that make Peter Temple's books such pleasurable experiences are here: the steady, satisfying unravelling of a mystery, the gallery of idiosyncratic characters (notably the dogged -- and beleaguered -- Frank Calder). But the prime Temple virtue -- sheer storytelling acumen -- is what makes Shooting Star such a success. --Barry Forshaw

Review:

Characterisation, dialogue and the quality of the prose are all top-class - Sunday Telegraph (Sunday Telegraph)

Discovering Peter Temple has been the highlight of my year - Mark Billingham (Mark Billingham)

Great locations, hard-nosed dialogue and a twisting plot combine to create superb entertainment - Evening Standard (Evening Standard)

Peter Temple is an addiction. Read one book and you want to read them all. Now - Val McDermid (Val McDermid)

About this edition

• Publisher: Quercus Publishing
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1847245900
• ISBN 13: 9781847245908
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320