Bonner, Hilary

PERSONAL:

Female.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Somerset, England.

CAREER:

Writer, journalist. Mail on Sunday and Daily Mirror, London, England, former show business editor; freelance journalist.

MEMBER:

Crime Writers' Association (chair, 2003).

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

The Cruelty of Morning, Mandarin (London, England), 1995.

A Fancy to Kill For, Mandarin (London, England), 1997.

A Passion So Deadly, Arrow (London, England), 1998.

For Death Comes Softly, Arrow (London, England), 1999.

A Deep Deceit, Heinemann (London, England), 2000.

A Kind of Wild Justice, Arrow (London, England), 2001.

A Moment of Madness, Heinemann (London, England), 2002, St. Martin's Minotaur (New York, NY), 2006.

When the Dead Cry Out, Heinemann (London, England), 2003, St. Martin's Minotaur (New York, NY), 2005.

No Reason to Die, Heinemann (London, England), 2004.

NONFICTION

(With Gordon Kay) Rene and Me: An Autobiography, Sidgwick & Jackson (London, England), 1989.

(With Dennis Kirkland) Benny: The True Story, Smith Gryphon (London, England), 1992, revised edition published as The Strange and Saucy World of Benny Hill: The Extraordinary Truth by the Man Who Knew Him Best, Blake (London, England), 2002.

Heartbeat: The Real Life Story, Boxtree (London, England), 1994.

(With Clive Gunnell) Journeyman: Through Western England with Clive Gunnell, A. Sutton (Dover, NH), 1994.

(With Amanda Barrie) It's Not a Rehearsal: The Autobiography, Headline (London, England), 2002.

Contributor of articles to periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS:

British journalist and former show business columnist Hilary Bonner debuted as a novelist with her 1995 title The Cruelty of Morning. Since then she has written numerous crime and suspense novels, mostly set in the west of England. With The Dead Cry Out and A Moment of Madness, Bonner also achieved publication in the United States.

Torquay, Cornwall, is the setting for When the Dead Cry Out, "a character-driven suspenser focusing on a lonely British police inspector obsessed with a newly reopened murder case from her childhood," as a critic for Kirkus Reviews described it. Detective Inspector Karen Meadows, the heroine of several novels by Bonner, is unmarried and forty. Her work keeps her focus off her personal life, but when a skeleton is discovered, Meadows suddenly finds her professional and private lives converging. She believes the body is that of a neighbor woman who went missing almost three decades earlier, along with her two children. The husband is still the prime suspect, as he was almost thirty years earlier when young journalist John Kelly helped to investigate the case. Now Kelly and Meadows search for the perpetrator in this book which, as the Kirkus Reviews critic concluded, "keep[s] readers guessing." Further praise came from Shots Magazine online contributor Mary Andrea Clarke, who felt "Hilary Bonner does a good job of depicting the atmosphere and depth of emotions triggered by the case." For Barbara Franchi, reviewing When the Dead Cry Out on the Reviewing the Evidence.com Web site, it was "a good solid British police procedural."

A Moment of Madness is another installment in the series featuring Meadows and Kelly. This novel focuses on Kelly, now a major London journalist who fights boredom with his job and current lover by investigating the death of rock star Scott Silver. Along the way, he begins an affair with Silver's widow. For a Kirkus Reviews critic, this book provided "intense suspense from a veteran, with a surprising final twist." Similar praise came from a Publishers Weekly reviewer who found the novel a "twisty, gripping mystery."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2005, review of When the Dead Cry Out, p. 610; April 15, 2006, review of A Moment of Madness, p. 380.

Publishers Weekly, March 20, 2006, review of A Moment of Madness, p. 39.

ONLINE

Crime Time,http://www.crimetime.co.uk/ (November 16, 2006), Hilary Bonner, "On A Deep Deceit and More."

Fantastic Fiction,http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/ (November 16, 2006), "Hilary Bonner."

Harriet Klausner Reviews,http://harrietklausner.wwwi.com/ (November 16, 2006), Harriet Klausner, review of When the Dead Cry Out and A Moment of Madness.

New Mystery Reader,http://www.newmysteryreader.com/ (November 16, 2006), Stephanie Padilla, review of A Moment of Madness.

Reviewing the Evidence.com,http://www.reviewingtheevidence.com/ (November 16, 2006), Sarah Dudley, review of A Moment of Madness, and Barbara Franchi, review of When the Dead Cry Out.

Shots Magazine,http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/ (November 16, 2006), Mary Andrea Clarke, review of When the Dead Cry Out. *