The Primrose Convention
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
Bannister "is as good at creating suspense as she is at creating characters."
—San Jose Mercury News
When the publisher of the Skipley Chronicle hired Primrose Holland as his newspaper's advice columnist, it was either the best decision he ever made—or the worst. For Rosie, a pathologist who quit her job at the morgue to come to this local weekly in the spirit of adventure, is larger than life in every sense.
But the reason her breezy column has doubled the Chronicle's circulation is the same reason she's a tough employee: she's not afraid to speak her mind, and speak it loudly. Faced with letters from readers about everything from inadvertently eating a slug to the etiquette of finding your mother in bed with a younger man, Rosie's advice is always unorthodox, frequently hilarious, and prone to land her in hot water.
But Rosie never gets in as much trouble as she does when she volunteers to help Fiona Morris look for her brother Philip, who disappeared while birdwatching in the Hebrides. Fiona and Rosie set off for Scotland to look for Philip, along with two recruits: another of Rosie's readers, birdwatching expert Arthur Prufrock, and his gardener, reluctant psychic Shad Lucas.
Perhaps they should have known better (especially the psychic). For Rosie's no-nonsense approach to this particular problem is about to prove very dangerous.
Jo Bannister's novels are consistently praised for her piercing characterization and nail-biting suspense, and with The Primrose Convention, she turns these skills to an eminently likable new cast and a smart, delightfully cozy premise.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The usually reliable Bannister (The Lazarus Hotel, 1997, and the Castlemere series) gets off to a surprisingly bland start in this kickoff of a new crime series. Her sleuth is advice columnist Rosie Holland, a rotund, tough-talking middle-aged woman living in Birmingham. Fiona Morris's bird-watching brother, Philip, has gone missing in the remote Hebrides islands off the coast of Scotland. She contacts Rosie, who turns to Arthur Prufrock, another ornithologist, who in turn brings along Shad Lucas, a young gardener and the reluctant possessor of psychic powers. This unlikely detecting team sets forth for Edinburgh and the offices of the British Trust for Wildlife, a bogus organization soon revealed as a front for immigration agents on the lookout for illegal aliens entering the country. Philip's lonely watching brief in the islands has clearly made him a witness to more than just nesting seabirds. Rosie is pleasant enough, although some readers might find her a bit too maternal and wise. And, although the pace picks up toward the end and the plot, once unfurled, is intriguing, the book suffers from the fact that so much of the suspense is backloaded.
