This is probably the least mysterious and least psychological story I’ve read from Vine/Rendell. The action takes place in a small Norfolk village where Jenny Warner is caring for Stella Newlands who is dying of lung cancer in a residential home. It’s the kind of gradually unfolding story that Vine is good at where you aren’t quite sure what the real mystery is going to turn out to be. Only in this case I didn’t think that there was really anything discovered that was worth the build up.

I enjoyed the book but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone looking for mystery, thrills or suspense. What we have here is a really interesting story that might have worked well in a general fiction book but didn’t really fit into the genre it was billed as.

The only thing that was really wrong with this book for me was that I read an edition that had been butchered from its original British English into American English for what seemed to be no particularly good reason. I can’t believe that any vaguely literate American would have trouble figuring out that “ladybirds” were “ladybugs” or that a “plough” is a “plow” seeing as these words are all used in context. These changes dragged me out of the setting. I suppose I deserve that for reading an edition that wasn’t aimed at me but it has left me wondering what else gets changed between the author and the reader and what on earth publishers must think of their reader’s intelligence.