Simon Mason with Russ Thomas: The Woman Who Laughed
June 25 @ 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM BST
Join us for an evening with acclaimed author Simon Mason, in conversation with Sheffield’s own Russ Thomas, as they delve into Simon’s gripping new novel—a haunting crime story set in the aftermath of the 2020 lockdowns. When the bag of a murdered sex worker reappears five years after her disappearance, old wounds are reopened and new questions arise. With themes of justice, memory, and the unseen lives in our cities, this promises to be a powerful and thought-provoking event.
About the book:
In the first months of 2020, there was a spate of murders of Black sex workers in northern cities. One of them was Ella Bailey, last seen talking to a punter in an alley in Sheffield city centre, and although no trace of her was ever found, the punter, Michael Godley, soon confessed to all three murders. Five years later, as another sex worker is murdered in the same district, the bag Ella had been carrying with her reappears, hanging on the door handles of a café, and a local vagrant claims to have seen Ella sitting on a bench in a churchyard near the site of the murder.
South Yorkshire Police call in the Finder. So begins a search that takes him back to the strange days of the pandemic, to talk to those who knew Ella best, such as her wayward girlfriend ‘Loz’, abusive boyfriend Caine Poynton-Smith and respectable foster-parents still struggling to come to terms with Ella’s life. How did their intelligent, strong-willed daughter, a bright student and national schoolgirl athletics champion, end up in that alley?
As fear grips the city, our Finder must court danger to discover the truth.
About the author:
Simon Mason has pursued parallel careers as a publisher and an author, whose YA crime novels Running Girl, Kid Got Shot and Hey, Sherlock! feature the sixteen-year-old slacker genius Garvie Smith. A former Managing Director of David Fickling Books, where he worked with many wonderful writers, including Philip Pullman, he has also taught at Oxford Brookes University and has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Exeter College, Oxford.
Location: