Priscilla Masters is the author of ten crime novels, the first of which, ‘Winding Up The Serpent’ in 1995, introduced Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy, a freewheeling cycling enthusiast based in the moorlands of Staffordshire.

Priscilla has also written three medical thrillers, inspired by her family background - her grandfather, father, husband, brother and son are all involved in the medical profession. She is currently working on her eleventh novel, the first in a proposed new series set in Shrewsbury and featuring coroner Martha Gunn.

Priscilla is the third in a family of seven multiracial children adopted by an orthopaedic surgeon and his classics graduate wife. She lives in rural Shropshire with her husband - when he’s not working in the favelas of Brazil - and still practises as a nurse. She thinks this probably accounts for strangulation as being her favourite mode of murder. “Particularly when done with a gaudy Disney tie, as being a nurse I don’t like too much suffering.”

Priscilla Masters’ work has been described as intricately plotted and powerful, with the capacity to shock.

For more information go to www.joannapiercy.com

Publications

Winding Up The Serpent - Published By Allison & Busby 1995 A debut crime novel featuring heroine Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy who investigates the mysterious death of a nurse. Despite a lack of evidence at the post mortem, DI Piercy is convinced that the nurse was murdered, and she must battle against several prejudices in her determination to find the killer

Catch The Fallen Sparrow - Published By Allison & Busby 1996 Priscilla Masters presents a tale of the tragic life and death of a young boy, set on the moorlands of Staffordshire.

A Wreath For My Sister - Published By Allison & Busby 1997 A third crime novel featuring Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy who discovers the lifeless body of a woman on a Staffordshire hillside, and on closer inspection the bruises on her body reveal that she has been murdered.

And None Shall Sleep - Published By Allison & Busby 1997 From the author of WINDING UP THE SERPENT, a reissue of a fourth crime novel featuring DI Joanne Piercy, who has to cope with the arrival of the Regional Crime Squad in her police station when a solicitor is brutally and professionally murdered. In the ALLISON AND BUSBY CRIME series.

Night Visit - Published By Allison & Busby 1998 The year does not begin well for Dr Harriet Lamont, and by February her marriage is over. Worried about the affect the split will have on her young daughter, Harriet finds herself becoming obsessed by the disappearance of six-year-old Melanie Carnforth over a decade before.

Scaring Crows - Published By Allison & Busby 1999 All is not well when Dave Shakleton arrives at Hardacre Farm on his morning milk round: the cows were waiting to be milked, yet there was no sign of the farmer. When he enters the farmhouse he discovers the bodies of Aaron Summers and his son Jack, with an abandoned shotgun propped by the door. Was this a case of murder – then suicide? The forensic evidence suggests otherwise and when DI Joanna Piercy discovers that Aaron also had a daughter, Ruthie, she puts in hand a massive police search to find her – alive or dead.

Embroidering Shrouds - Published By Allison & Busby 2001 A spate of robberies targeting elderly women has shocked the normally sedate town of Leek to its core. And now it appears that the robbers have moved on to murder. At the eerily named Spite Hall, the body of Nancy Lawrence has been found bludgeoned to death, lying over the tapestry she was in the process of embroidering. Why have the robbers killed this time? When Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy begins her investigation she is surprised to find that the victims next door neighbour is Nan’s brother and is even more shocked to discover that the pair have not spoken for years. With the aid of her colleagues, Joanna unravels a mystery – the tangled threads of which a rooted years in the past.

Disturbing Ground - Published By Allison & Busby 2002 Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colour, but where exactly does the first one visibly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. In pronounced cases there is no question about them. But in some cases, in various degrees supposedly less pronounced, to draw the line demarkation few will undertake. Herman Melville From her surgery window Dr Megan Banesto watches as the body of Bianca Rhys is dragged from the local pond – a paranoid schizophrenic (renowned for her outrageous claims and stories), her death doesn’t come as a surprise to the local community. Soon after, when a ten year old child goes missing, Megan begins to wonder if Bianca’s scandalous statements about disappearances from the area were really the truth rather than symptoms of her disease. Set in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small Welsh mining town, Disturbing Ground is a gripping novel which seeks to find the truth about the shifting boundary between sanity and insanity.

Endangering Innocents - Published By Allison & Busby 2003 Something is amiss at a small primary school in the village of Horton. A local man, Joshua Baldwin, has been sitting in his car outside the school watching the children as they play. So DI Joanna Piercy is called out to investigate. She meets with the teachers and with Baldwin and eventually decides there is nothing to worry about. She is terribly wrong. A few days later little Madeline Wiltshaw goes missing from her home in Horton. Joanna is distraught that she trusted her gut instinct so implicitly, that she was not more suspicious of Baldwin. And the coming weeks will be a testing time for Joanna, as she desperately tries to find young Madeline. But with foot and mouth disease ruling the surrounding countryside off-limits, Joanna's task is made doubly difficult...