[A] twisty "snake in the garden" country-house mystery [where]
Lorac constructs a challenging puzzle and provides a marvelous glimpse
into pre-WWII Oxford life." -- Booklist, Starred Review
"Lorac keeps everything professional and smartly paced"-- Kirkus
Reviews
"Now tell us about your crime novel. Take my advice and don't try to be
intellectual over it. What the public likes is blood."
The Surrays and their five children form a prolific writing machine,
with scores of treatises, reviews, and crime thrillers published under
their family name. Following a rare convergence of the whole household
at their Oxfordshire home, Ruth--middle sister who writes "books which
are just books"-- decides to spend some weeks there recovering from the
pressures of the writing life, while the rest of the brood scatter to
the winds again. Their next return is heralded by the tragic news that
Ruth has taken her life after an evening at the Surrays's hosting a set
of publishers and writers, one of whom is named as Ruth's literary
executor in the will she left behind.
Despite some suspicions from the family, the verdict at the inquest is
suicide--but when Ruth's brother Richard receives a letter from the
deceased which was delayed in the post, he enlists the help of CID
Robert Macdonald to investigate what could only be an ingeniously
planned murder.