(5/10 stars)

“Not dead yet? We must see about that.”

Dawn Meadowes is young, beautiful, and brilliant, having just published a best-selling novel. She’s also dead, fatally stabbed in her own garden. No one could be less suited to investigate the artists of Chelsea than the prissy, peevish Inspector Ronald Price, unless it’s his daydreaming sergeant, Frobisher. They soon discover that Dawn’s life is anything but an open book. Continue reading “Long Shadows (1955) by Joanna Cannan”

 (6/10 stars)

“The fact is I find that no one in this house has been quite frank with me, and the conclusions I draw from that are necessarily significant and unpleasant ones.”

Richard Hallow may be a doctor, but his touch is far from healing. Not only is the man a compulsive philanderer who is scheming to put his mother-in-law into a nursing home, his neglect of his National Health patients has just led to a baby’s death.

When Richard is found dead of a broken neck on the floor of his surgery the list of suspects is endless. And with the misanthropic Detective Superintendent Price on the case, the path of justice is far from certain. Continue reading “And Be a Villain (1958) by Joanna Cannan”