The Woman Who Laughed cover art

The Woman Who Laughed

Finder Mysteries, Book 3

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The Woman Who Laughed

By: Simon Mason
Narrated by: Matthew Spencer
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About this listen

 'The very definition of unputdownable' David Peace
'Mason packs more into 200 pages than many writers do at twice the length' Sunday Times

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 - 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.©2025 Simon Mason (P)2025 Quercus Editions Limited Crime Thrillers Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Thriller & Suspense Crime Murder

Critic Reviews

The Finder Mysteries are everything great crime fiction aspires to be: human, intricate and hugely entertaining. The Woman Who Laughed kept me guessing, to the last page, and kept me thinking long after that. Simon Mason is a master storyteller whose books should be on every serious reader's wishlist. (Sarah Hilary)
[T]ranslates the ethos of Georges Simenon's Maigret into an English setting: concise, richly characterised, impeccably plotted (Barry Forshaw (The Best of Summer Crime, Financial Times))
All stars
Most relevant
This is the third Finder book I’ve read and enjoyed. The reserved character of the finder and his dedicated and detailed search for the missing makes for a good read. Each book reveals a little more of the Finder’s story (which is a sad one, but no more details to spoil it for a new listener). For each case he takes a novel. In this case it’s “Persuasion” and he manages to draw out parallels with the case. We encounter all the characters he meets along the way, much detail, which I like. This time he is to find a sex worker, Ella, who was thought dead after an attack by a serial killer but who has resurfaced. The setting is in Sheffield, much of it in the seedy St Vincent district. I enjoyed it very much and the narrator did a great job and had just the right voice.

Good, detailed thoughtful story

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