Death of a Stranger - Softcover

Dewhurst, Eileen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1447256972 ISBN 13: 9781447256977

Publisher: Bello, 2013

Synopsis

Even before Tim Le Page and his new wife, Anna, can leave for their honeymoon, he is called back to investigate an attempted murder. But this is no ordinary case, the victim is Tim's mother.

Drifting from one lover to another, Lorna has never been the maternal type and, as a result, she has made more than her fair share of enemies.

In particular, Tim can't help feeling that Simon, the latest escort to materialise at Lorna's side, is too young even for his glamorous mother. But if Simon isn't interested in Lorna, then what is he doing in Guernsey?

With professional detachment hampered by family loyalty, Le Page knows he must solve this case, and soon - his mother's life may depend on it.

About this title

About the Author:

An only child, Eileen Dewhurst was self-sufficient and bookish from an early age, preferring solitude or one-to-one contacts to groups, and hating sport.Her first attempts at writing were not auspicious.At 14, a would-be family saga was aborted by an uncle discovering it and quoting from it choked with laughter.A second setback came a few years later at school, when a purple passage was returned with the words 'Cut this cackle!' written across it in red ink: a chastening lesson in how embellishments can weaken rather than strengthen one's message.

Eileen read English at Oxford, and afterwards spent some unmemorable years in 'Admin' before breaking free and dividing her life in two: winters in London doing temporary jobs to earn money and experience, summers at home as a freelance journalist,spinning 'think pieces' for the Liverpool Daily Post and any other publications that would take them, and reporting on food and fashion for the long defunct Illustrated Liverpool News, as well as writing a few plays.

Her first sustained piece of writing was a fantasy for children which was never published but secured an agent.Her Great Autobiographical Novel was never published either, although damned with faint praise and leading to an attempt at crime writing that worked: over the next thirty years she produced almost a book a year and also published some short stories in anthologies and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

Eileen has always written from an ironic stance, never allowing her favourite characters to take themselves too seriously: a banana skin is ever lurking.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Even before she abandoned him 30 years ago to run off with Geoffrey Lorimer, who died soon afterward, Tim Le Page's mother has never exactly been the maternal type. But now Tim worries that she's crossing a new line, showing up for his wedding on the island of Guernsey with a new boy-toy in tow, this one even younger than his predecessors. Although Simon Shaw maintains an air of mystery by whispering that he's a private eye investigating a suspicious fire that leveled Bernard and Marjorie Charters' greenhouse and the pair of Italian master paintings stored inside, he and Lorna Le Page both behave beautifully at Tim's wedding to veterinarian Anna Westonuntil Lorna, leaving her hotel, is struck down by a hit-and-run driver. Early and often, Lorna insists that the driver was Constance Lorimer, the widow who tried to run her down half a lifetime ago. But Tim, who's postponed his honeymoon because he's not only his mother's closest relative but the detective inspector in charge of the case, doesn't have to wait long for a second, more successful, vehicular assault, one that ties the case more closely to the fire at the Charters' and to some uncomfortable secrets about his mother's affairs. Veteran Dewhurst (Dear Mr. Right, 1990, etc.) manages to surprise you without shocking or outraging youjust the recipe for a whodunit of the old school. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bello
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1447256972
• ISBN 13: 9781447256977
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192