Wed 4 Mar 2020
An Archived PI Mystery Review: PATRICIA WALLACE – Deadly Grounds.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[3] Comments
PATRICIA WALLACE – Deadly Grounds. Sydney Bryant #2. Zebra, paperback original; 1st printing, May 1989.
I don’t remember the title of the first one, but this is [San Diego-based] PI Sydney Bryant’s second recorded adventure. She’s hired here by a neighbor, a 15-year-old schoolgirl who finds the body of a friend along a pathway of the private girls’ academy they both attended.
Complicating the story is Sydney’s potentially torrid love affair with the policeman in charge. While Wallace’s easy writing style often seems to explain too much, as if telling the story to someone reading a mystery for the first time, she does know teenage girls.
PostScript: Well, she convinced me, at least. It’s really too badthat both the title and packaging make th book look to much like a run-of-the-mill horror novel, at least at first glance — and how much chance does a book get to find its proper audience, anyway?
The Sydney Bryant series —
Small Favors. Zebra 1988
Deadly Grounds. Zebra 1989
Blood Lies. Zebra 1991
Deadly Devotion. Zebra 1994
August Nights. Five Star, hardcover, 2002
March 4th, 2020 at 5:35 pm
As it so happens, from the list of other books that Patricia Wallace wrote, they were in the horror/supernatural category. I believe all of these were published by Zebra/Kensington, but I’m not sure about that:
Traces (1982)
The Taint (1983)
The Children’s Ward (1985)
Only Child (1985)
Night Whisper (1987)
Water Baby (1987)
See No Evil (1988)
Monday’s Child (1989)
Twice Blessed (1990)
Lullabye (1990)
Thrill (1990)
Fatal Outcome (1992)
Dark Intent (1995)
March 4th, 2020 at 8:40 pm
Those covers are probably why I missed this one.
March 4th, 2020 at 9:15 pm
Sydney Bryant seems to have flown below everyone’s radar.
Kevin Burton Smith has her in his alphabetical listing of all the PI’s he knows about on his Thrilling Detective website, but no informational page for her. I’ve sent this review on to him, but I don’t there’s much here about her for him to go on.
The marketing director for Zebra at the time certainly didn’t have a clue.