{"id":7076,"date":"2026-06-07T08:17:33","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T15:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=7076"},"modified":"2026-06-07T08:17:33","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T15:17:33","slug":"priscilla-masters-the-cliffs-edge-murders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/priscilla-masters-the-cliffs-edge-murders\/","title":{"rendered":"Priscilla Masters: The Cliff’s Edge Murders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coroner Martha Gunn #8<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>When I started this book, which is set in the UK, I had to look up exactly what a Coroner does as it’s a position we don\u2019t have in the US. In the UK it’s a judicial office, and the coroner works with the police in an investigation of a sudden and suspicious death, rendering a verdict on the type of death at an inquest.\u00a0 So many of us have read mysteries containing an inquest \u2013 Rebecca<\/em> being a famous example \u2013 that the whole concept was not completely mysterious.\u00a0 As this book has a Coroner as its main character, the research was handy, and it allowed me to understand that the central character, Coroner Martha Gunn, has a close and working relationship with the police.<\/p>\n

I love a good police novel, and will read them in almost any format, from Michael Connelly to Deborah Crombie to Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.\u00a0 This novel doesn\u2019t have the extra bells and whistles provided by those writers, but it has a good story, good characters, and a believable and compelling police investigation at its center. The book opens with a horrific car crash \u2013 two teen boys have driven off the edge of a cliff.\u00a0 When the police begin to examine the scene they discover another body \u2013 there\u2019s an old woman wrapped in a blanket in the trunk of the car. There are no clues to how she possibly could have ended up in the trunk.<\/p>\n

As the police go through the sad business of notifying the boy\u2019s parents, the name of their friend Solomon reoccurs so often that they are on full alert looking for him.\u00a0 They are also trying to discover the identity of the woman in the car with them.<\/p>\n

Threaded through the story is Martha\u2019s growing relationship with a widowed detective, Alex.\u00a0 Martha has been a widow for a long time herself and has raised her two children, now finding herself at a lose end \u2013 alone and a bit lonely in a big house.\u00a0\u00a0 She\u2019s worried about her daughter who has an inappropriate and unpleasant boyfriend, and she\u2019s trying to rope in her daughter\u2019s twin to convince her to step away from the man.\u00a0 Her relationship with Alex is proceeding slowly and awkwardly, but it\u2019s proceeding. It reminded me a bit of Simon Brett’s delightful Ellen Curtis and her tangled family relations in the Decluttering series.<\/p>\n

The main part of the story concerns Alex\u2019s dogged investigation as he attempts to find the missing boy and discover the identity of the woman, at one point sure he will be meeting and then discarding every elderly woman in the area.\u00a0 He often turns to Martha, and they talk the case through, Martha doing some investigation on her own.\u00a0 They make a good team. This was a brisk, well told story. It could have used a bit of light editing as the author repeats some bits of information, but I liked Martha and I liked Alex.\u00a0 I\u2019m willing to both look back to past installments and to see what happens next as the series moves forward.\u00a0 —\u00a0Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

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Coroner Martha Gunn #8 When I started this book, which is set in the UK, I had to look up exactly what a Coroner does as it’s a position we don\u2019t have in the US. In the UK it’s a judicial office, and the coroner works with the police in an investigation of a sudden … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2515,2518,8,2517,1276,2516],"class_list":["post-7076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-coroner","tag-joffe-books","tag-police","tag-priscilla-masters","tag-robin-agnew","tag-the-cliffs-edge-murders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7076"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7079,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7076\/revisions\/7079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}