Launch: Missing by Cath Staincliffe

Last Thursday evening, before I left for Paris, I went to the launch at Waterstone's Deansgate of a new book in the popular Sal Kilkenny series of crime novels by my old friend Manchester writer Cath Staincliffe. Cath is unbelievably prolific, and it seems hardly any time since she won the Commonword Novel Competition with her first, Looking for Trouble, which was immediately taken up by a mainstream publisher and serialised on Woman's Hour. Amazingly, the new book, Missing, is her seventh in the series, and in the meantime she has published other stand-alone novels and is the originator of the Granada Blue Murder detective series starring Caroline Quentin.

Missing (Allison and Busby) finds Sal searching for two missing people, one a young mother, while on Sal's home front the love interest hots up...

Here's the enticing beginning:

People disappear every day. Most of them choose to. Have you ever been tempted? Slip on a coat, pick up your bag and walk, or drive, or run. Turn your back on home, family, friends, work.

Tim Preston took these photos of Cath with the book and signing copies: