A Dark-Adapted Eye

Author: Rendell, Ruth

Brand: Penguin Random House

Color: Cream

Binding: paperback

Format: Deckle Edge

Number Of Pages: 288

Release Date: 01-10-1993

Part Number: 9780452270640

Details: Product Description


"Dazzling...writing at her formidable best, Barbara Vine taps the poetry as well as the pain of her characters' clamorous declarations of their need for love." —New York Times Book Review

"When the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world launched a second byline, she actually stepped up her writing a level." —TIME

Faith Severn has grown up with the dark cloud of murder looming over her family. Her aunt Vera Hillyard, a rigidly respectable woman, was convicted and hanged for the crime, but the reason for her desperate deed died with her. Thirty years later, a probing journalist pushes Faith to look back to the day when her aunt took knife in hand and walked into a child's nursery. Through the eyes of a woman trying to understand an unspeakable, inexplicable family tragedy, Barbara Vine leads us through a shadow land of illicit lust, intimate sins, and unspoken passions—to a shattering and illuminating climax, as inevitable as it is unexpected. In this enthralling masterpiece, a great crime writer has achieved both a flawlessly crafted novel of psychological suspense and a deeply probing work of literary art.


Amazon.com Review


Writing under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, departs from her famous detective team of Wexford and Burden to tell a gripping tale of family madness. Vera Hillyard is a domineering and possessive woman who strives for obsessive control over a malicious older son, a youngest son who is--or isn't--illegitimate, and a daughter who is a devoted sister to her younger brother. The daughter secretly seeks to escape Vera's grasp and instead provokes a murder. This winner of the 1986 for best mystery novel belongs to the genre of old murders reconsidered and the question of who did what to whom and why is teasingly left unresolved.


Review


No other living mystery writer complains more openly about the burden of fans expecting her to bring back series characters when she has other pursuits in mind. In
A Dark-Adopted Eye . . . does what never could: proves she has something far greater to offer. --
Publishers Weekly


About the Author


Barbara Vine is the pseudonym of Ruth Rendell. Considered by many to be Britain's greatest living crime writer, Rendell was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger for a lifetime's achievement in crime writing in 1991, which sits nicely next to her four Gold Daggers and one Silver Dagger, and her three Edgar Allen Poe Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, including a Grandmaster Award from the aforementioned MWA.

EAN: 9780452270640

Package Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.3 x 0.7 inches

Languages: English