Book Bargains

Synopsis

The greatest masterpiece is survival

Barrister Trish Maguire needs all the time she can find to help her young half-brother adjust to life after the violent death of his mother. Sir Henry Buxford, an influential acquaintance, has other ideas. He asks Trish to investigate one of his private charities, a magnificent art collection built up before 1914 and lost for most of the twentieth century.

Taking a crash course in the murkier aspects of the art world, Trish is determined to unlock the secrets she is sure are hidden somewhere in the collection. Her research takes her not only into the heart of an engrossing love story, but also the agonizing reality of life in the trenches of the Frist World War. She soon discovers a web of deceit that has spanned the decades since, catching all kinds of people in its filaments. Now, the innocent, the violent, and the victims all have to free themselves. And someone dies.

With her trademark dexterity and hard-hitting suspense, Natasha Cooper brings us the unstoppable Trish Maguire in her most challenging and enthralling case to date.

Press Reviews

'Warmth, sincerity and good characterisation... Raises it above others in the genre' - Sunday Telegraph

'Like Minette Walters... Cooper writes methodical, meticulous crime' - Daily Mirror

'Cooper at her considerable best; aficionados need not hesitate... her skills in this kind of material remain non-pareil... presses all the right buttons and ensures total reader involvement. Another winner' - Crime Time

About the Author

An ex-publisher, past Chair of the Crime Writers' Association, and lifelong Londoner, Natasha Cooper sets her novels in the city that she loves. She also writes for a variety of newspapers and journals, including Crime Time and The Times Literary Supplement, and has contributed to many radio programmes such as Woman's Hour and Saturday Review. She regularly speaks at crime-writing conferences on both sides of the Atlantic.

Her interest in prison reform has led her to lecture in one male prison, spend a fund-raising night in another, and to speak in a debate at the Oxford Union on the murder of James Bulger.

Natasha Cooper is the author of, among many others, Fault Lines, Prey to All and Out of the Dark. In 2002 she was shortlisted for the Dagger in the Library, an award that goes 'to the author whose work has given most pleasure to readers'.