The Woman Who Laughed

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What to expect

'The very definition of unputdownable' David Peace
'Mason packs more into 200 pages than many writers do at twice the length' Sunday Times

In the first months of 2020 there was a spate of murders of Black sex workers in northern cities. One of them was Ella Bailey, last seen talking to a punter in an alley in Sheffield city centre, and although no trace of her was ever found, the punter, Michael Godley, soon confessed to all three murders.

Five years later, as another sex worker is murdered in the same district, the bag Ella had been carrying with her reappears, hanging on the door handles of a café, and a local vagrant claims to have seen Ella sitting on a bench in a churchyard near the site of the murder. South Yorkshire Police call in the Finder.

So begins a search that takes him back to the strange days of the pandemic, to talk to those who knew Ella best, such as her wayward girlfriend 'Loz', abusive boyfriend Caine Poynton-Smith and respectable foster-parents still struggling to come to terms with Ella's life. How did their intelligent, strong-willed daughter - bright student and national schoolgirl athletics champion - end up in that alley?

As fear grips the city, our Finder must court danger to discover the truth.

Critics Review

The Finder Mysteries are everything great crime fiction aspires to be: human, intricate and hugely entertaining. The Woman Who Laughed kept me guessing, to the last page, and kept me thinking long after that. Simon Mason is a master storyteller whose books should be on every serious reader's wishlist.
Sarah Hilary
Mason brings to life Sheffield's red-light district, while Finder's quest awakens sleeping dogs with devastating consequences
Mail on Sunday
Simon Mason's Finder mysteries are well-written, elegantly-structured and unputdownable, bringing shades of Simenon's Maigret to contemporary rain soaked Britain
Daunt Books
Simon Mason packs more into 200 pages than many writers do at twice the length. Kudos.
The Times
[Mason] has struck gold with his laconic, just-the-facts Finder mysteries, about a freelance investigator brought in by police to track missing people
The Sun (Crime & Thriller special)
[T]ranslates the ethos of Georges Simenon's Maigret into an English setting: concise, richly characterised, impeccably plotted
Barry Forshaw (The Best of Summer Crime, Financial Times)
Crime fans are hooked on Mason's tight and gripping novellas
Peterborough Telegraph
Dark, exquisite and utterly absorbing, The Finder Mysteries are a rare and special thing
Russ Thomas
Mason packs more into 200 pages than many writers do at twice the length
Sunday Times
Puzzling, literary, concise and utterly compelling
Choice Magazine
British procedural with local flavour and dry humour. Brings to mind classic noir, but rooted in the here and now
Loaded
At once searching, believable, short, well-written, and provided with a Maigret-like protagonist who is used by Mason to offer a wise humanity in another brilliant novel.
Critic (September Book of the Month)

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