Nights in White Satin

Laura Principal #4

by Michelle Spring

Katie Arkwright was seen at eleven o’clock, tossing her soft gold curls to the insistent rhythms of Hot Chocolate. More than one person watched how she moved, noted how the deft shrug of her shoulder echoed the deeper pulse of the music.At eleven fifteen she was gone for good.Katie Arkwright left, apparently of her own accord. She abandoned the May Ball quickly and decisively, as a person might walk away from a bus queue. As if the money that Jared Scott-Pettit had forked out for a ticket meant nothing. She took her splendid young self—the elegant white curve of a dress, the silver armlets, the dainty sandals, the corona of curls—and disappeared.Not even a glass slipper remained behind on stone steps to signal she’d ever been there.

Genres: Mystery, Mystery Thriller

320 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1999

About the author

Michelle Spring was raised on Vancouver Island. She worked for many years as an academic in Cambridge where she lives with her husband and their two children. She has written several academic books and five Laura Principal thrillers.

Reviews

[Lizzie Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the Cambridge May ball on a warm balmy evening in June, amidst champagne, smoked salmon, music and laughter, young pretty Katie Arkwright disappears.

In this the fourth book in the series private investigator, Laura Principal of Aardvark Investigations had been engaged to repel gatecrashers and maintain security at the ball. Following the disappearance of Katie, Laura is retained by Stephen Fox, senior tutor at the college to find the missing girl.

Whilst pursuing her investigations into Katie’s disappearance, a murder and an unexpected death occur. Both shocking. But are they related to the missing girl? Could the solution be locked in the past?

The writing in this book is beautiful. Michelle’s descriptive powers brought the scenes to life. I was there. At all times during the story the weather is hot. I felt this heat and the beauty of Cambridge. The contrasts of the life she portrays are vivid. Some of the settings invoking a time gone by, and when Laura goes punting with her friend Helen down the river to Grantchester for a picnic, it brought to mind ‘Stands the church clock at ten to three and is there honey still for tea’.

The story is full of beauty, violence, sadness, pain and emotional conflict. It is also about choices, and the guilt that comes from fast actions that we think will solve an immediate problem, and then too late we find that we cannot live with them, and the resulting pain.

A first-class mystery. Highly recommended.
------
Reviewer: Lizzie Sirett

[Kris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kirkus Review
Even though men will sometimes be boys when women and drink are on offer, nothing could be more decorous, or more jealous of its propriety, than the May Ball, when Cambridge students celebrate the end of exams. That's why Philip Patterson, the master of St. John's College, passes over the police to ask Laura Principal.
Laura's just finished arranging security matters for the ball, to look into the disappearance of Katie Arkwright, a visitor from lowly Anglia University across town, who asked her prim escort, Jared Scott-Pettit, to leave the dance and then took off without him when he declined. The briefest investigation discloses Katie's earlier brush with Cambridge: while she was waiting tables at a private dinner for the Dories, 40 undergraduates and recent alumni of St. Bartholomew's, in the college's Echo Room, her clients turned on her, stripped her, and assaulted her. s the person behind her disappearance now Roger Duff, ringleader of the Dories, or Stephen Fox, senior tutor at St. Bart's, who sniffs to Laura that Katie was anything but blameless in the incident? Before Laura bereft of her partner and sometime lover Sonny Mendlowitz, who's off trying to vindicate a client accused of beating a prostitute can focus her suspicions, murder narrows the field of suspects and raises the stakes for those remaining. Good Cambridge backgrounds and a strong sense of moral outrage offset the predictability and occasional self-importance of Laura's fourth case.

[Nicky Warwick · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unusual case for PI Laura Principal.
It begins when she & her team are asked to do security for a Cambridge University May Ball.
A young girl flees from the ball early in distress & then disappears.
Laura is contacted the next day by the Master of the college & asked to look into the disappearance discreetly.
Suspecting there is more to this request she starts digging

[Kitha Pola · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
A decent thriller. But awfully descriptive and long.

[zsdev · Rating 4 out of 5]

unpredictable! gave me chills

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 3 out of 5]

A female PI investigates the vanishing of a young woman from a May Ball at Cambridge. The students shown are one-sided, wealthy boorish young men, and I would have liked to see a better representation of the college. The descriptions can be lovely as in punting, picnicking and the lavish ball. I was also puzzled by how many people each wanted to spend time alone in a room called the Echo Room staring at a violent painting - were they taking it in turn? This feels dated now as it was written in 1999 but it is still readable.

[Shirley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book. Author new to me, but being an Anglophile, loved the background location, Cambridge, England. Plot excellent also. Young girl mysteriously disappears after the yearly May Ball, held to commemorate the end of studies at Cambridge University.

[Kirsty Darbyshire · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll write this series off as not my kind of thing. Just as when I read the first book in the series I can't quite put my finger on what I didn't enjoy about it. Nothing's really wrong with it it just doesn't make my pulse race or my fingers scrabble to turn the pages over.

[Azuree · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 4th Laura Principal book find her searching for a girl that disappears on the night of the big ball. Fairly good mystery but slow pace. I do love how the series takes its titles from songs, though.

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

English mystery. So cheesy...you have to be in the mood :)

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. I liked Laura Principal, the setting and the mystery over all

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book not just for the mystery but for the vivid look into the world of Cambridge and its student life. A good, complex mystery.

[Kay Wells · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot better read than Every Breath You Take. It has a better storyline to keep you guessing and more twists and turns.

[Bekbek]

Good book but to drawn out.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good little read. PD James ish with comment on feminist gains at Cambridge. Or rather not so distant repeal of gross treatment of females

[Tricia Layden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written, good character development.