The Liars Book Reviews

The Liars by Peter Hill Book Summary

The Liars (a bizarre Murder Mystery)

'Lies, gossip, and jealousy fail to deter two of Scotland Yard's finest in this entertaining mystery with an extra twist or two...or three.'

Pittsburgh Press

When the battered body of fisherman Denis Kerkin is found hanging by one leg from an ancient stone gibbet, blunt cockney Detective Chief Superintendent Staunton and the talented and amorous Detective Inspector Wyndsor of New Scotland Yard's Murder Squad are sent to the isolated fishing village of Crukenporth in Cornwall to investigate.

Here they encounter Miss Trevose, an autocratic cripple who never leaves the room specially adapted for her requirements. It is a self-constructed cage for this woman who is old, vindictive and dying. Yet her brain is still active, confined in a maimed body as she is confined within the room, and she controls with feudal arrogance the lives of most of the inhabitants of the village.

Denied personal involvement she experiences vicariously the emotions of the people she manipulates, nurses her hatreds, and plays her own specialized game with life and death.

For her, the investigating officers are just two more pawns to be played as she decides.

As the officers delve into the bizarre circumstances of the death and Miss Trevose plots to use the police enquiry to exact personal vengeance, it becomes clear that more than one person had good reason to wish Denis Kerkin dead.

It is the 1970s and Bob Staunton and Leo Wyndsor, without the more sophisticated aids to detection available today, strive to sort the truth from the lies before the passions, the hatreds and the greed they unearth explode into further violence, in this gripping novel of suspense and intrigue.

The Liars is the second in the Staunton and Wyndsor series of classic police procedural murder mysteries set in various locations in Britain.

The others are The Hunters, The Enthusiast and The Savages.

These books were previously published worldwide, by major publishing houses, in hard and paperback, and are now available as eBooks.

Each novel is a stand-alone story, but with the same major protagonists.

Peter Hill has had a successful career working extensively in television for renowned British drama series. He has been a writer, script editor and producer both in the UK and New Zealand, where he now lives.

Peter has now returned to novel writing but in a different genre, and Killing Tomorrow, the first of a new trilogy of near and far-future novels, 'Evolution's Path', is also available as an eBook. The second, The Ladies' Game, and the third, Procreation, have recently been published.

Press comment on Peter Hill's books

'Exceptionally well told, with satisfying outcome.'

Columbus Sunday Dispatch

'Peter Hill does a fine job with character, plot, atmosphere and suspense. An engaging, witty and entertaining yarn.'

Publishers Weekly

'… a pair of attractive investigators—the young and aristocratic Leo Wyndsor and the slow-moving but smart veteran Bob Staunton. The case takes them to Cornwall, where a man has been murdered and hung on an old gibbet....'

New York Times

'I'd like to see Messrs. Staunton and Wyndsor in more books. They're a lot of fun—and they're good detectives.'

Daily Press, Newport News, Virginia

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The Liars (Peter Hill) Book Reviews 2024

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