Cath Staincliffe

Cath Staincliffe was brought up in Bradford and graduated from Birmingham University with a Drama degree. Moved to Manchester to work in community arts and spent the next eight years carrying out projects all over the north west in partnership with community groups. Also set up Dance Train with a few friends - running discos for fund-raisers and parties. After the birth of her first child she started going to writing workshops. Published poetry and short stories then moved onto longer fiction.

Looking For Trouble won the Commonword North West novel writing competition. Single parent, private eye Sal Kilkenny works a double shift; stalking the mean streets of Manchester when she's not busy keeping home and hearth together. Looking For Trouble was short listed for the CWA John Creasey award and serialised on BBC Women's Hour. Since then Cath has written three further Sal Kilkenny mysteries and had two more children.

Cath has been involved as a CWA member in developing Dead on Deansgate. She has recently completed Wounded, a multi-voiced story which is both police procedural and psychological thriller. She is now writing the fifth Sal Kilkenny mystery and reviews for the Manchester Evening News and Tangled Web.

the books

Looking For Trouble - (Crocus 1994) was short-listed for the Crime Writers Association's John Creasey Award for the best first crime novel and was also serialised on Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 4. Sal Kilkenny's first outing. A single parent and private eye she sets out to find Mrs. Hobbs missing son, a search that leads her into the Manchester underworld, a world of deprivation and petty theft, of well-heeled organised crime and murder.

Go Not Gently - (Headline 1997) - currently unavailable

Dead Wrong - (Headline 1998)
Sal Kilkenny has two very frightened clients on her hands. Divorcee Debbie Gosforth, is the victim of a deranged stalker; teenager Luke Wallace, is afraid he might be a murderer. Both are likeable, vulnerable but frustratingly unreliable - Debbie through blind fear, Luke because he simply cannot remember the night when, off his head on a cocktail of Ecstacy and alcohol, he is alleged to have stabbed his best friend Ahktar Khan to death.
As Sal sets about finding the identity of the stalker who's making Debbie's life a living hell, the city goes up in smoke. The IRA bomb the Arndale Centre and, against a backdrop of Euro 96 and Oasis, a summer of terror begins. And as she unearths disturbing new shreds of evidence about Ahktar's death, Sal finds herself and her family in a much more personal firing line.

The City Life Book of Manchester - Short Stories - Penguin p/b contributor 1999

Stone Cold Red Hot - (Allison & Busby March 2001)
This is the fourth Sal Kilkenny mystery. Twenty years ago Jennifer Pickering was disinherited, now her mother's dying and brother Simon wants her found. Sal Kilkenny spends her days tracing Jennifer and her nights on one of Manchester's toughest housing estates working for the Neighbour Nuisance Unit. Two cases, each spiralling out of control as events, past and present, collide with deadly impact.