Sheep's Clothing - Hardcover

Celia Dale

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0094683107 ISBN 13: 9780094683105

Publisher: Doubleday Crime Club, 1988

Synopsis

From the Queen of the suburban terror story and the author whom Ruth Rendell described as 'quiet, clever and subtle' comes a tale of confidence tricksters and menace. In Sheep's Clothing Celia Dale explores the life of lonely elderly ladies. Behind their heavily bolted doors they are surrounded by the treasures that they've collected over the years, which makes them necessarily wary of strangers and cautious of allowing people into their sanctuaries, for fear that their hidden savings could fall prey to unscrupulous people. When two charming and friendly women from the social services knock on their door there's no harm in letting them in, is there? After all, such lovely women only want to help them and it is nice to have some visitors for a change. What harm can it do to have a chat and a cup of tea? Sheep's Clothing dissects the little cruelties of life and is a reminder, as Matthew Coady wrote in the Guardian, 'that we are all victims of each other'. It is a sinister and beautifully crafted depiction of the horror that can lurk beneath even the most respectable façades.

About this title

About the Author

Born to parents who were both on the stage (her father was the actor James Dale), Celia Dale's first novel, The Least of These, was published in 1943 and she went on to write ten others. She won the Crime Writer's Association Veuve Clicquot Short Story award for Lines of Communication and A Personal Call and other stories in 1986 and worked on the Daily Express and the Sunday Express. She also worked as a book reviewer and a publisher's advisor and many of her stories have been adapted for radio and television. She lives in London.

From Publishers Weekly

This solid, but stolid, British entry follows two women who prey on the elderly. Posing as Social Service workers, Grace Bradby and her assistant, the pliable but dim Janice, visit elderly women and promise them a windfall benefit, meanwhile serving the victims drugged tea. They then proceed to clear out their valuables and money. The conwomen depend on the victims being too embarrassed to go to the police or not being believed by the authorities when they do report their suspicions. When Janice falls for a mysterious man she encounters in a pub, Grace begins to fear for the security of the operation; she doesn't trust her partner not to let slip some telling detail. When she meets Conroy Robinson, a well-to-do middle-aged business man tied to his elderly, and formidable, mother's apron strings, Grace sees a new opportunity and makes herself indispensable to the Robinsons. Meanwhile, Detective Inspector Wally Simpson begins to investigate the suspicious death of an elderly woman who dies of an overdose of sleeping pills and appears to have been robbed. Veteran writer Dale ( A Dark Corner ) creates a neat psychological study of some rather unpleasant people.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday Crime Club
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0094683107
• ISBN 13: 9780094683105
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208