The Disappearances of Madalena Grimaldi Marele Day 1994

Dustjacket synopsis:

"Claudia Valentine PI returns - gutsy and glamorous as ever...

"It is the start of a long hot summer and Madalena Grimaldi has disappeared. Claudia is hired to find the missing schoolgirl but she's already working on a case - the death of Guy Valentine, her father.

"As Claudia searches the streets, looking for the ghost of her derelict father and for the mysterious man who can lead her to Madalena, she finds herself sinking into a world where, for man, rock bottom is only the beginning."

Quotes:
"... in Ms Valentine, Marele Day has created a heroine for the 90s." - Time Out, London. "Claudia Valentine is smart, sassy and sexy, even when she's up to her eyeballs in mystery and intrigue." - The Herald.

First Paragraph:

The Kid felt the small round presure in the middle of his back and the lightness at his hips as the man from Pinkertons deftly removed the pearl-handled guns from the holsters. 'The slightest movement and I'll blast a hole clean through your body,' the man breathed down his neck.

From the outside it appeared as if the Kid was rooted to the spot. But inside the blood was whipping round his body as he was about to leap into a ravine. He wasn't afraid of dying but he didn't want to be shot in the back. Goddam city man, didn't he know the rules? Thirty-seven men he'd killed. He didn't want to be shot in the back by a goddam city man.

Behind him, the man was doing something. 'OK,' said the man, 'you turn around nice and easy.'

From the Allen and Unwin paperback edition, 1994.

This page and its contents are copyright © 2003 by Perry Middlemiss, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Last modified: June 9, 2003.