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Loretta Lawson #2
Why Aren't They Screaming?
Loretta Lawson needs to escape London. Diagnosed with glandular fever and ordered to rest, she sets off for the countryside and the apparently idyllic home of Clara Wolstonecraft- children’s author, strident peace activist and distant acquaintance in possession of a spare room. It’s the perfect set up as long as Loretta doesn’t mind sharing her space with the peace camp currently residing on Clara’s grounds.
The scenery is beautiful, the house idyllic… but the peace does not last long. The camp is plagued by one incident after another- a break in, an attempted arson, a dinner party interrupted by blood red paint splattering the windows.
But Loretta soon realises that the attacks are the least of their worries. Clara herself is being targeted by anonymous letters, phone calls, menacing radio messages. And she hasn’t said a word to the friends and family who fill her home. Why is she being targeted, and what exactly does she have to hide? Loretta is determined to find out before the situation escalates. But it may already be too late…
The scenery is beautiful, the house idyllic… but the peace does not last long. The camp is plagued by one incident after another- a break in, an attempted arson, a dinner party interrupted by blood red paint splattering the windows.
But Loretta soon realises that the attacks are the least of their worries. Clara herself is being targeted by anonymous letters, phone calls, menacing radio messages. And she hasn’t said a word to the friends and family who fill her home. Why is she being targeted, and what exactly does she have to hide? Loretta is determined to find out before the situation escalates. But it may already be too late…
214 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
6 people are currently reading
55 people want to read
About the author
Joan Smith
19 books40 followersJoan Alison Smith is an English novelist, journalist and human rights activist, who is a former chair of the Writers in Prison committee in the English section of International PEN. In 2003 she was offered the MBE for her services to PEN, but refused the award. Joan Smith is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
July 3, 2019
The second of five in the energetic mystery series featuring English professor Loretta Lawson. Set in 1986 Oxfordshire, Lawson finds herself caught in a maelstrom of murder, peaceniks, vigilantes, and domestic violence. Although less acclaimed than the series’ debut, “A Masculine Ending,” this sophomore offering still entices with clever layers of intrigue and suspense. Recommended for those who prefer murder detection with a feminist twist.
Thank you, NetGalley and Ipso Press, for the preview copy. Opinions are fully mine.
#WhyAren'tTheyScreaming? #NetGalley
Thank you, NetGalley and Ipso Press, for the preview copy. Opinions are fully mine.
#WhyAren'tTheyScreaming? #NetGalley
July 2, 2018
A nice, cost mystery reminiscent of Veronica Stallwood’s Kate Ivory Oxford series but it was totally ruined for me by a completely unsatisfactory ending.
February 25, 2024
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No one is screaming because nothing happens in this tepid mystery that goes nowhere, and slowly peters out. I can see no reason for this title.
Previous editions of this book feature a woman and a cat relaxing fireside, a more accurate depiction. For unknown reasons, my copy shows a lone cabin in the woods, so naturally this mystery takes place at a large manor house outside Oxfordshire.
Loretta lectures at London University, and feels her sore throat is a mild case of glandular fever. A friend gets her an invitation to stay at a guest house on the rambling property owned by the painter Clara Wolstonecroft while she recuperates. There is a US airbase next to the property and when disruptors are banned from camping out in protest of Reagan's air strikes in Libya, Clara allows the peace camp to move onto her land. One of the objectors is a young woman fleeing an abusive husband, others the press have branded as radical feminists, or even worse, lesbians. Vandals have attacked the camp, ransacked the guest cottage, Clara has received threatening letters, and someone has thrown red paint at the front door. The local resident's association is against her, as is the local Conservative MP Colin Kendall-Cole, one of her old friends.
A dinner party introduces a couple named Barker-Parker, a pensioner Gilbert, Clara's ex-husband Jeremy, and Robert, a composer who seems very nice. Soon Robert is cooking her dinner in his cottage; Schubert and red wine, a very nice gougere, with monkfish and a sleepover to follow. ("It was as if part of her that had been dry and still as a leafless branch had suddenly felt the first intimation of spring".)
Finally, there is murder, as Loretta finds Clara shot, in her Liberty print dress, in the drawing room. The police naturally involve Loretta in the investigation. With all the characters, you would think red herrings abound. But no. They are all pretty much forgotten.
A murderer is found, an explanation out of the blue never mentioned previously in the story, and an abrupt finale that will leave readers unsatisfied.
As Publisher's Weekly put it: "the story's resolution is certain to disenchant many readers...yet, after finishing such an unsatisfactory mystery few will care."
This is number two in the series of five Loretta Lawson mysteries written between 1987 and 1995. Loretta references her previous discovery of dead bodies and resulting detection ("You know what happened last time!"), so it seems this is "Murder She Wrote" style. Again, her un-divorced ex-husband is her sidekick.
Readers looking for a spunky heroine would do better elsewhere, and even fans of the series were let down by the non-ending. This I found really weak.
No one is screaming because nothing happens in this tepid mystery that goes nowhere, and slowly peters out. I can see no reason for this title.
Previous editions of this book feature a woman and a cat relaxing fireside, a more accurate depiction. For unknown reasons, my copy shows a lone cabin in the woods, so naturally this mystery takes place at a large manor house outside Oxfordshire.
Loretta lectures at London University, and feels her sore throat is a mild case of glandular fever. A friend gets her an invitation to stay at a guest house on the rambling property owned by the painter Clara Wolstonecroft while she recuperates. There is a US airbase next to the property and when disruptors are banned from camping out in protest of Reagan's air strikes in Libya, Clara allows the peace camp to move onto her land. One of the objectors is a young woman fleeing an abusive husband, others the press have branded as radical feminists, or even worse, lesbians. Vandals have attacked the camp, ransacked the guest cottage, Clara has received threatening letters, and someone has thrown red paint at the front door. The local resident's association is against her, as is the local Conservative MP Colin Kendall-Cole, one of her old friends.
A dinner party introduces a couple named Barker-Parker, a pensioner Gilbert, Clara's ex-husband Jeremy, and Robert, a composer who seems very nice. Soon Robert is cooking her dinner in his cottage; Schubert and red wine, a very nice gougere, with monkfish and a sleepover to follow. ("It was as if part of her that had been dry and still as a leafless branch had suddenly felt the first intimation of spring".)
Finally, there is murder, as Loretta finds Clara shot, in her Liberty print dress, in the drawing room. The police naturally involve Loretta in the investigation. With all the characters, you would think red herrings abound. But no. They are all pretty much forgotten.
A murderer is found, an explanation out of the blue never mentioned previously in the story, and an abrupt finale that will leave readers unsatisfied.
As Publisher's Weekly put it: "the story's resolution is certain to disenchant many readers...yet, after finishing such an unsatisfactory mystery few will care."
This is number two in the series of five Loretta Lawson mysteries written between 1987 and 1995. Loretta references her previous discovery of dead bodies and resulting detection ("You know what happened last time!"), so it seems this is "Murder She Wrote" style. Again, her un-divorced ex-husband is her sidekick.
Readers looking for a spunky heroine would do better elsewhere, and even fans of the series were let down by the non-ending. This I found really weak.
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June 12, 2020This book finds Loretta Lawson, lecturer in English Literature at the University of London, ailing from the effects of a sudden attack of glandular fever. Her close friend Bridget Bennett, with whom Loretta solved the mystery recounted in this book’s predecessor, A Masculine Ending, arranges for her to have the use of a cottage owned by Clara Wolstonecroft, another friend, in which to recuperate.
This proposed respite proves to be less than restful. Having travelled to Oxfordshire, Loretta finds that the previous resident of the cottage has stayed on beyond his planned departure date. Loretta spends the night in the landlord’s house, and learns that the property is close to an RAF base which has recently subjected to public protest after planes based there had been involved in an attack on Libya. (The book was written and set in the mid-1980s). Most local residents are opposed to the protest, as the camp plays a major part in the local economy of the area. However, Clara owns much of the land adjacent to the base, and has given the protesters permission to establish their camp there. Emotions in the local area are running high, and Clara’s house is the subject of vandalism on Loretta’s first evening there, and then the protesters’ camp itself is attacked by a group of violent counter-protesters.
Clara confides in Loretta that she believes that she has been subject to excessive observation by the police and intelligence services. Loretta is initially inclined to dismiss this as general paranoia, but stumbles upon her own evidence that Clara might actually be right. Then things escalate to a new level when Clara is found dead, having been shot.
Joan Smith is very adept at building the tension. Loretta Lawson is an eminently reasonable, and completely empathetic, character, and her reactions are readily believable. This novel is now well over thirty years old but has not suffered too drastic an ageing process, although one section, when Loretta is struggling to contact her journalist ex-husband, John Tracey, and leaving messages for him to call her back at various remote places, did make me stop to wonder how we ever managed to get anything done without mobile phones!
This proposed respite proves to be less than restful. Having travelled to Oxfordshire, Loretta finds that the previous resident of the cottage has stayed on beyond his planned departure date. Loretta spends the night in the landlord’s house, and learns that the property is close to an RAF base which has recently subjected to public protest after planes based there had been involved in an attack on Libya. (The book was written and set in the mid-1980s). Most local residents are opposed to the protest, as the camp plays a major part in the local economy of the area. However, Clara owns much of the land adjacent to the base, and has given the protesters permission to establish their camp there. Emotions in the local area are running high, and Clara’s house is the subject of vandalism on Loretta’s first evening there, and then the protesters’ camp itself is attacked by a group of violent counter-protesters.
Clara confides in Loretta that she believes that she has been subject to excessive observation by the police and intelligence services. Loretta is initially inclined to dismiss this as general paranoia, but stumbles upon her own evidence that Clara might actually be right. Then things escalate to a new level when Clara is found dead, having been shot.
Joan Smith is very adept at building the tension. Loretta Lawson is an eminently reasonable, and completely empathetic, character, and her reactions are readily believable. This novel is now well over thirty years old but has not suffered too drastic an ageing process, although one section, when Loretta is struggling to contact her journalist ex-husband, John Tracey, and leaving messages for him to call her back at various remote places, did make me stop to wonder how we ever managed to get anything done without mobile phones!
June 10, 2018
I remember reading this and other books by Joan Smith quite a lot of years ago (just checked and it came out in 1988, so probably around then). I didn’t remember anything about the plot, though, except that I enjoyed it, and snapped it up with nostalgic alacrity (and not a little surprise) when I spotted it on NetGalley, evidently now being reissued. (I recall a surge in feminist crime fiction around that era - much of which I consumed with enthusiasm - including Val McDermid’s Lindsay Gordon series, Mary Wings, Barbara Wilson and much more.)
It’s certainly of its time, with a women’s peace camp at an American base in the Oxfordshire countryside playing a major role following the 1986 US bombing of Libya.
Protagonist Loretta Lawson is a sympathiser of the peace women, but not really part of that world - she’s an academic at a London university. Recovering from a bout of illness, Loretta accepts a friend of a friend’s kind offer of a few weeks’ stay at a country cottage to recuperate. But it doesn’t prove quite as restful as Loretta might have hoped; strange and alarming things happen from the outset, and things take a major turn for the worse when a body is found...
Set in what now feels like a long-forgotten world of Thatcherism, Ceefax, cassette tapes, and needing to find a phone box and a pile of ten pence pieces in order to make a call when out and about (Loretta has a mad dash around London looking for a working phone box at one point), there’s definitely a nostalgia factor for those of us old enough to remember the ‘80s. The actual plot is fine and did keep me guessing, though the ending is deliberately unsatisfying and certain actions of certain parties seem extraordinary.
Loretta herself is an engagingly imperfect heroine who reacts to danger pretty much like most of us probably would. I never entirely felt I had a grasp on her character - but then I haven’t read (or at least can’t remember) the first book in the series of which this is the second. I’d like to have seen a bit more of the peace camp, too.
All in all a very enjoyable read with, now, a hefty dash of nostalgia.
It’s certainly of its time, with a women’s peace camp at an American base in the Oxfordshire countryside playing a major role following the 1986 US bombing of Libya.
Protagonist Loretta Lawson is a sympathiser of the peace women, but not really part of that world - she’s an academic at a London university. Recovering from a bout of illness, Loretta accepts a friend of a friend’s kind offer of a few weeks’ stay at a country cottage to recuperate. But it doesn’t prove quite as restful as Loretta might have hoped; strange and alarming things happen from the outset, and things take a major turn for the worse when a body is found...
Set in what now feels like a long-forgotten world of Thatcherism, Ceefax, cassette tapes, and needing to find a phone box and a pile of ten pence pieces in order to make a call when out and about (Loretta has a mad dash around London looking for a working phone box at one point), there’s definitely a nostalgia factor for those of us old enough to remember the ‘80s. The actual plot is fine and did keep me guessing, though the ending is deliberately unsatisfying and certain actions of certain parties seem extraordinary.
Loretta herself is an engagingly imperfect heroine who reacts to danger pretty much like most of us probably would. I never entirely felt I had a grasp on her character - but then I haven’t read (or at least can’t remember) the first book in the series of which this is the second. I’d like to have seen a bit more of the peace camp, too.
All in all a very enjoyable read with, now, a hefty dash of nostalgia.
December 4, 2021
The plots chunter along well enough and the writing is fine, though sometimes a bit clunky, but really I am in this series for the late-eighties feminist-academic worldbuilding. The characters, settings, and situations are hugely enjoyable, and it's just really nice being in a feminist-centred universe - the eye that Joan Smith brings to the world picks out details that I, too, notice, but that often go overlooked in more mainstream narration. (Loretta always has half an eye out for her safety in public, in a way that's completely recognisable but not overdone.)
And! The ending - - was a genuine shock to me, and also exactly right.
I do not know why it is called Why Aren't They Screaming, though. That's a line from a Philip Larkin poem, 'The Old Fools', about old people, and there were no old people in this book that I noticed.
And! The ending - - was a genuine shock to me, and also exactly right.
I do not know why it is called Why Aren't They Screaming, though. That's a line from a Philip Larkin poem, 'The Old Fools', about old people, and there were no old people in this book that I noticed.
May 2, 2019
Set behind a backdrop of Thatcher's Britain, Greenham Common and the Libya bombings, I was unsure I was going to enjoy Why Aren't They Screaming. Our heroine Loretta Lawson is a world a way from anyone I would know who lived during that period. A feminist, trendy lefty from a Metro centric elite is not someone I could relate to. Having said all that I throughly enjoyed the book, which once got going, was full of shady characters who disliked anyone who didn't support the government's line on a nuclear deterant. A murder was committed and Ms Lawson's actions are not shoehorned with Joan Smith happy to bring in strands from her first novel. The twist in climax should anger but not wholely surprise anyone.
May 31, 2018
I just could not get into this. There was nothing that grabbed my attention. I had read other reviews saying I didn’t need to read the first in the series, but I think I will try the first to see if it makes a difference with this one.
January 29, 2025
Very 80s
March 30, 2013
Author Joan Smith's follow-up novel to her excellent debut, A Masculine Ending, is -- if anything -- even better. In it, London University professor Loretta Lawson heads to the country for some much-needed rest following a serious illness. She moves into a tiny cottage adjacent to the kind-hearted but forceful Clara Wolstonecroft. The fiery Clara has championed a women's peace camp that is protesting the American presence at the Dunston Royal Air Force base in the wake of the 1986 American bombing of Libya. She resettles the women on her own property after the town council has them removed from their original location.
Clara has been subject to shunning and sharp words from locals who prize the American presence for the money it brings to the town, some anonymous threatening notes and phone calls, vandalism, and some strange goings-on in the night. When Clara is murdered, Loretta is certain it isn't the work of burglars, as the police seem to think. As in A Masculine Ending, with the help of her estranged journalist husband, Clara starts investigating on her own.
The ending of Why Aren't They Screaming? comes as almost as great a shock as that of A Masculine Ending. Smith continues to write Dr. Loretta Lawson as a capable, intelligent amateur sleuth. She's not infallible or super-human, and she's someone I wished I knew in real life. I was very, very glad that I had already bought the third novel in the series, Don't Leave Me This Way, which I began reading just minutes after finishing Why Aren't They Screaming?. Be sure to have your own copy of Don't Leave Me This Way for when you turn the last page of Why Aren't They Screaming?, too!
Clara has been subject to shunning and sharp words from locals who prize the American presence for the money it brings to the town, some anonymous threatening notes and phone calls, vandalism, and some strange goings-on in the night. When Clara is murdered, Loretta is certain it isn't the work of burglars, as the police seem to think. As in A Masculine Ending, with the help of her estranged journalist husband, Clara starts investigating on her own.
The ending of Why Aren't They Screaming? comes as almost as great a shock as that of A Masculine Ending. Smith continues to write Dr. Loretta Lawson as a capable, intelligent amateur sleuth. She's not infallible or super-human, and she's someone I wished I knew in real life. I was very, very glad that I had already bought the third novel in the series, Don't Leave Me This Way, which I began reading just minutes after finishing Why Aren't They Screaming?. Be sure to have your own copy of Don't Leave Me This Way for when you turn the last page of Why Aren't They Screaming?, too!
May 7, 2016
The second Loretta Lawson book once again features Joan Smith's inquisitive English professor, still using telephone boxes and listening to cassette tapes. Throughout the story there are references to her previous investigation and love life, but there's no need to have read the first book to enjoy the second.
This time the action takes place shortly after America's air strikes against Libya, in mid-1980s UK. Our feminist investigator is recuperating in the neighbourhood of a women's peace camp on the perimeter of an airforce base.
The theme of impotency in the face of political scheming makes for a darker story than the first, and it also briefly touches on domestic violence and the role of women in marriage.
Even after two books, I haven't quite got a mental image of Loretta, although her hairstyle and fashion sense are described. She seemed less feisty in this story and more nervous. However, I'm bound to read the next in the series, as the story's ending was rather unexpected.
This time the action takes place shortly after America's air strikes against Libya, in mid-1980s UK. Our feminist investigator is recuperating in the neighbourhood of a women's peace camp on the perimeter of an airforce base.
The theme of impotency in the face of political scheming makes for a darker story than the first, and it also briefly touches on domestic violence and the role of women in marriage.
Even after two books, I haven't quite got a mental image of Loretta, although her hairstyle and fashion sense are described. She seemed less feisty in this story and more nervous. However, I'm bound to read the next in the series, as the story's ending was rather unexpected.
October 31, 2012
Needing a quiet place to recover from a lingering illness, a place in the English countryside, Loretta Lawson's friend comes up with a "perfect" place where a friend of hers has a guest house that is being vacated early by the current tenant. A quiet place to rest and recover is not what she gets; she does get right in the middle of murder. She is an amateur sleuth so she starts investigating, which almost proves fatal.
April 30, 2016
I am writing a chapter in the Women's Legal Landmarks project. My subject is the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. I represented a large number of the women when they were brought before the courts. I've been trying to find ways of seeing the camp through the eyes of other people. So I bought this book, Why Aren't They Screaming. In the 80s I enjoyed reading Joan Smith's books and articles - sharp, intelligent, coherent. I couldn't get to grips with this book. Any suggestions, why?
July 26, 2011
OK mystery/thriller, although I found the ending to be quite different from the norm. I swear I read some other book by Joan Smith but for the life of me can't remember what it was. I'm looking for a mystery series I read and thought that the protagonist of this book, Loretta Lawson, might have been part of that series. Guess not. *sigh*
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April 14, 2008Mystery
August 9, 2015
2.5 stars - Just OK. Didn't make a huge amount of sense & most of the characters left me cold. Not much in the way of sleuthing going on.
June 17, 2019
Awful and absolute tripe. The characters are not believable and the book ends abruptly and without conclusion. Terrible book.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews