Hall, Patricia list



	Patricia Hall Patricia Hall is the pseudonym of Maureen O’Connor, whose career as a journalist has included working for The Yorkshire Post, The Guardian and The Observer. Since becoming a freelance writer she has turned her talents to crime fiction. Born in Yorkshire, she now lives in Oxford.

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	Death by Election to to p By-election fever has gripped the constituency of Bradfield, and the national media circus has descended on the town or so it seems to Laura Ackroyd, the reporter from the local newspaper who knows the town and its politics a great deal better than the self-styled experts hot off the London train. Laura is not only assigned to cover Richard Thurston and his campaign, but is also expected to follow up other news: such as the police investigation into the discovery of an unidentified body on the moors; the student campaign to ‘out’ various public figures; and the hints of some dirty dealings in the corridors of the town hall. As Laura peels away the veneer of each story, she discovers a tangle of old and new indiscretions, emotional blackmail and a disturbing amount of violence, and when the latter is turned against herself, she becomes aware that there is a common thread to all these matters which leads to the main players taking a murderous road to Westminster. In an intriguing mystery, which is as much whydunnit as whodunnit, the spotlight of publicity turns out to be a curtain-raiser on a scandal which proves physically and politically fatal to the villain and victim.