The Unquiet Dead (Paperback)

Reviews for Dead Alone'Dead Alone is packed with suspense and well drawn characters. Gripping stuff' Women's Way'Gay Longworth has written a taut thriller that is crying out for the TV treatment. One for the sisters' Ireland on Sunday'A classy, extremely proficient debut for Longworth, with solid plotting, believable CID rivalries, and an admirable heroine in Jessie' Kirkus'So realistic and gripping, it's enough to make you re-think your whole career.' Jamie Theakston

Detective Inspector Jessie Driver returns for her second adventure in the seedy backstreets of London. As before her language is ripe and her observations are caustic as she gets to grips with crime and long-ago mysteries. In this case she goes to a decaying building where drug-users and the homeless hang out. Her mission is simply to find a missing girl - but she soon finds herself sucked into a set of thrilling circumstances that call for more than average ingenuity by detective and reader in solving a series of riddles. Jessie finds that the mummified body of a man has a strange relationship to a drowned boy, and there is also the kidnapping of a girl to contend with and the insanity of a bereaved father. Past and present are cleverly intertwined throughout as Jessie deals with London's lowlife. The book is in large format and it comes with intrigue on every page. (Kirkus UK)

Forgiveness is indeed a blessing. Detective Inspector Jessie Driver, of the West End Central CID, has her hands full. Her brother Bill, back from treating AIDS victims in Africa, is camping out in her flat; her floundering romance with rock star P.J. Dean is about to become fodder for the tabloids; and DI Mark Ward and her new boss, DCI Moore, are both hostile toward her, particularly when she suggests that stage actress Sarah Klein has concocted a missing-daughter scenario to garner publicity for her new show. Even worse, when Jessie tries tracking down the daughter, she winds up at the derelict Marshall Street Baths, where Don, the slightly deranged caretaker, keeps repeating, "He drowned. It was an accident," which hardly explains the mummified body, chained to the wall and wearing a watch that stopped on Feb. 23, 1989. Who was the mummy? Why was he left to die in the baths? These questions lead Jessie to two family tragedies. Anglican exorcist Father Forrester's suggestion that the "unquiet souls" stuck between here and hereafter must be forgiven before they can move on unsettles pragmatic Jessie, still grieving over her mother's death from cancer. Self-serving lies, demented rationales, and stirrings of faith must all be examined before Jessie understands the depths to which forgiveness can drive people. Fine-tuned, complex plotting, with the beleaguered Jessie (Dead Alone, 2003) a heroine worth rooting for-although nonbelievers like her may find their cynicism challenged here. (Kirkus Reviews)

Jessie Driver returns in the second of this fresh, streetwise London-based crime series from 'The New Mistress of Thrillers' Sunday ExpressThe decaying Marshall Street Baths in the heart of Soho are a den for drug-users and the homeless -- the perfect hang-out for a teenage runaway. But when DI Jessie Driver goes there in search of a missing girl, she finds something quite different: the mummified body of a man, buried in the rat-infested basement. Who was he? And how does this murder relate to the tragic drowning of a young boy years earlier?Jessie's investigation takes her on a journey through the past -- the kidnapping of a little girl; the descent into madness of a bereaved father -- but the dangers she'll face are very much in the present.