Mystery Women Authors

Paula Gosling

Biography

Paula Gosling was born in Detroit, Michigan USA. After finishing university, she worked as a copywriter and a freelance copy consultant - a career she continued after moving to England in 1964. She became a full-time writer in 1979 after publishing A Running Duck. Since then she has published twelve novels, has won both the John Creasey and Gold Dagger Awards for the Crime Writers' Association, and has served as the Association's Chairperson.

When she isn't committing murders by typewriting, cooking, or reading, she can be found in her sewing studio, creating abstract embroideries and patchwork quilts.

Paula Gosling's Home Page

A number of Paula Gosling's books are currently out of print but it does appear that some of them are being re-released -so checking at Amazon.com periodically may assist you in finding the book you want.

Books

Cobra

Published Warner Books Jan 1999

Order Cobra from

A Running Duck (Fair Game in USA)

Won the John Creasey Award in 1978. Made into two films - Cobra in 1986 and Fair Game.

Published Macmillan 1978

Order A Running Duck from

The Wychford Murders

The gruesome murder of Beryl Tompkins brought Detective Chief Inspector Luke Abbott of the Regional Crime Squad back to Wychford, the sleepy little West Country village where he'd been born and raised.

For Abbott it was just another case, to be solved with as little fuss and as quickly as possible. But there were distractions. Jennifer Eames, whom he'd last seen twenty years before had grown into a beautiful woman. And Wychford too had changed. Behind the picture postcard prettiness it was seething with secret loves and hates, envy, jealousy and greed.

And now a second murder. Wyn Frenholm had nothing in common with Beryl Tompkins, except that her throat had also been horribly slashed. Either it was a copycat killing or somewhere in Wychford a psychopath was loose....(From the Publisher)

Published Macmillan 1986 (out of print)

Death Penalties

The third popular Luke Abbott mystery from the author of A Running Duck. Detective Chief Superintendent Luke Abbott is called in on the case when the widow of a man who was killed in an "accidental" car crash begins to receive threats.

Published Scribners 1991

Order Death Penalties from

Zero Trap

Published Macmillan 1979 (out of print)

Loser's Blues (Solo Blues in USA)

Published Macmillan 1980

Order Loser's Blues from (large print)

Mind's Eye (as Ainslie Skinner)

Published Secker and Warburg 1980

Woman In Red

Published Macmillan 1983 (out of print)

Jack Stryker and Kate Trevorne Mysteries

Monkey-Puzzle

Gold Dagger Award Winner for Best Crime Novel of 1986

Published Macmillan 1985 (out of print)

Hoodwink

Lieutenant Jack Chase: not so much a legend in his own lifetime, more of a cautionary tale. Not so much an accident waiting to happen...it already did, and he's got the X-rays to prove it.

Chase is taken off his Big Case and assigned to what looks like a simple murder: male, middle-to-late sixties, stabbed in the chest one time. Evidence of robbery, no weapon found. Maybe just a little too simple.

Then he meets beautiful publishing editor Casey Hewson and starts to fall for her in entirely the wrong sort of way. The deceased was about to publish the awful truth about a local gangster and a missing socialite. But publish and ...POW!

There's a drunk who isn't drunk, a mysterious desk that keeps disappearing, a politician with an old grudge, a cack-handed bunch of hoods who can't get anything right...

...and The Man Who Keeps Buying Hats. With a case like this Chase soon realises that his first mistake was getting out of bed. And his next mistake could be his last...(From the Publisher)

Jack Styker and Kate Trevorne are supporting characters in this novel.

Published Macmillan 1988

Order Hoodwink from (large print)

Backlash

Published Macmillan 1989 (out of print)

Matt Gabriel Mysteries

The Body in Blackwater Bay

Dark deeds are afoot in the small Great Lakes town of Blackwater. Poison-pen notes are flying around, an unknown party wants to develop the bucolic area, and a mysterious family has walled themselves into a compound with very high fences. Last but not least, Blackwater's famous resident artist claims that her abusive ex-husband is lurking around -- but no one else has ever seen him in the region. Is Daria Grey crazy, or is she lying for some reason? When he turns up dead, the locals can't help but wonder if her stalking-victim act was a set-up to murder.

Daria's childhood friend Kate Trevorne, now an English professor, is vacationing at her family's summer house with her lover, big-city homicide cop Jack Stryker. They do most of the investigating here, although local sheriff Matt Gabriel (who has an old crush on Daria) is nominally in charge. The men handle the physical evidence, while Kate sifts the local gossip for possible clues to the case(s).

Published Scribners 1992 (out of print)

A Few Dying Words

Peaceful Blackwater Bay, a pleasant resort town on one of the Great Lakes, becomes the scene for murder -- once again -- when the annual Halloween carnival becomes the place for deadly revenge.

When fall arrives, the northern summer resorts empty out, the streets reclaimed by the locals. The residents of Blackwater Bay look forward to the annual Halloween festival known locally as the Howl. Sheriff Matt Gabriel is less enthusiastic: he sees the good-natured mayhem -- bonfires, practical jokes, imaginative vandalism -- as something to be endured before winter blizzards set in.

But the Howl season turns out more malevolent than mischievous. After a fatal car crash involving an old friend, the sheriff, puzzled by the man's dying words, begins looking into a long-ago tragedy concerning the death of a childhood friend and several now-solid Blackwater Bay citizens.

On the night of the Carnival, a body is found -- a banker, another of the witnesses present when young Jacky Morgan went over the Eagle Head ravine in a barrel. A coincidence? Matt doesn't think so. With the help of young lawyer Dominic Pritchard and his girlfriend Emily Gibbons, Matt searches for the truth about Jacky's death...and uncovers a number of treacherous town secrets. (From the Publisher)

Published Little, Brown 1993 (out of print)

The Dead Of Winter

The town of Blackwater Bay is back. Jess Gibbons, a 30-something home-economics teacher; is a little bored and a little depressed. She can't know that when a local fisherman glimpses a corpse floating beneath the ice, events will conspire to give her more excitement than she bargained for. Meanwhile, Matt Gabriel is mystified by the corpse's identity.

Jess cooks gourmet meals for her housemates despite the highly charged air and everyone is on edge, including Jess' normally placid cats. This complicated puzzler, pivoting from cozy sewing circles to talk of Mafia hit men and cocaine dens, comes to its brilliantly staged conclusion at the annual ice festival where Gosling dramatizes the point that smooth and shiny surfaces can hide a lot of treachery.

Published Mass Market Paperback 1997

Order The Dead of Winter from

Non Mystery Books

Web site address

Paula Gosling Home Page

Other sites for Paula Gosling

None Found

Page created by Leone Moffat.

Last updated 03-Mar-2002