The Ice House - Softcover

Walters, Minette

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330327917 ISBN 13: 9780330327916

Publisher: Macmillan Pub Ltd, 1995

Synopsis

‘It was evident, if there were no other entrance to the ice house, that the body had at some point traversed this thorny barrier... The big question was, how long ago? How long had that nightmare been there?’

The people of Streech village had never trusted the three women living up at the Grange – not since Phoebe Maybury’s husband suddenly, inexplicably, vanished.

Ten years later a corpse is discovered in the grounds and Phoebe’s nightmare begins. For once they have identified the body the police are determined to charge her with murder...

‘The most impressive first novel in years’ Daily Telegraph

‘A seductive writer with an imagination that makes her dangerous to know’ Sunday Express

‘Terrific first novel with a high Rendellesque frisson count’ The Times

About this title

About the Author:

Minette Walters is England’s bestselling female crime writer. She has won the CWA John Creasey Award for best first crime novel, the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best crime novel published in America and two CWA Gold Daggers for Fiction. Minette lives in Dorset with her husband.

From Publishers Weekly:

Walter's zinger of a debut deftly dissects the lives of three reclusive English women who become the subject of censure and speculation during a murder investigation. After a rotting corpse is found in the ice house of Streech Grange, Chief Inspector Walsh sets out at once to prove it is the body of David Maybury, whom wife Phoebe was suspected of murdering when he was reported missing years earlier. Since no body was ever found, Walsh deduces that Maybury returned and was killed by Phoebe or one of her friends, Anne and Diane, who live with her at the Grange. Detective Sgt. Alan McLoughlin, however, isn't so sure, especially after the coroner says the dead man was older than David and the local belief that the three women are a lesbian menage a trois turns out to be untrue. But McLoughlin can't understand why the Grange's residents make the investigation so difficult by refusing to answer questions and sometimes openly lying. Walters skillfully brings together the relationships between the women and the policemen into a complicated but believable puzzle, which she solves with panache.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Macmillan Pub Ltd
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0330327917
• ISBN 13: 9780330327916
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416