
A Talent For Destruction
Sheila Radley(Author)
Macmillan Bello (Publisher)
Published on 13. September 2012
Book
Paperback/Softback
190 pages
978-1-4472-2643-7 (ISBN)
Description
A clergyman should be above reproach, an example to his flock. But what is Detective Chief Inspector Douglas Quantrill to make of the Reverend Robin Ainger, Rector of St Botolph's in the quiet Suffolk town of Breckham Market, when the good-looking, popular parson lies to the police? With the thawing of prolonged winter snow, the skeleton of a recently dead man has been found in a meadow belonging to the Rectory. Whose is the body, and how did it come there? Both Ainger and his wife Gillian are taut with suppressed hysteria at the discovery. As Quantrill -- in the face of carefully framed denials from the Rectory, but with hints that Mrs Ainger's elderly father knows more than he's telling -- struggles to piece together clues centering on the presence of two Australians, an uncouth backpacker and a clever girl with beautiful flame-red hair, he begins to guess at the depth of suffering hidden beneath the conventional routine of Rectory life. Sheila Radley has a novelist's eye for character and motive, as well as a crime writer's talent for deception and mystery.
The result is a tense, beautifully crafted and satisfying story with an entirely unexpected denouement -- a worthy successor to her previous book, The Chief Inspector's Daughter
The result is a tense, beautifully crafted and satisfying story with an entirely unexpected denouement -- a worthy successor to her previous book, The Chief Inspector's Daughter
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Pan Macmillan
Target group
Interest Age: From 18 years
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
Weight
299 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4472-2643-7 (9781447226437)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Sheila Radley is the pseudonym of Sheila Robinson, who was born and brought up in rural Northamptonshire, one of the fortunate means-tested generation whose further education was free. She went from her village school via high school to London University, where she read history.
She served for nine years as an education officer in the Women's Royal Air Force, then worked variously as a teacher, a clerk in a shoe factory, a civil servant and in advertising. In the 1960s she opted out of conventional work and joined her partner in running a Norfolk village store and post office, where she began writing fiction in her spare time. Her first books, written as Hester Rowan, were three romantic novels; she then took to crime, and wrote 10 crime novels as Sheila Radley.
She served for nine years as an education officer in the Women's Royal Air Force, then worked variously as a teacher, a clerk in a shoe factory, a civil servant and in advertising. In the 1960s she opted out of conventional work and joined her partner in running a Norfolk village store and post office, where she began writing fiction in her spare time. Her first books, written as Hester Rowan, were three romantic novels; she then took to crime, and wrote 10 crime novels as Sheila Radley.