In the opening paragraph of the novel a murderer describes the process of picking up an unknown girl in a club prior to strangling her, and admits to disposing of nine others in similar manner. The murderer then returns to Crestcote House, a gothic mansion which has been turned into a peaceful retreat for ‘artists of recognised stature’.The community comprises an eccentric composer, a reclusive iron-worker, a beautiful sculptress, a discontented novelist, and three assorted painters, one female,...
Writer Will Adams’ peaceful life is interrupted by the sudden and not entirely welcome arrival on his doorstep of his young niece, Marisa, and her best friend Nick.Marisa has learned from her parents, film director Jack Adams and his actress wife, Ruth, that Jack is not her real father and she is determined to find the man who is. Reluctantly Will agrees to help her but a shock awaits him: it looks as if Marisa’s biological father is Scott Hartman, a fabulously wealthy recluse who has not been...
Lydia Ackland was nearly blind when she fell downstairs and was killed. Her grandchildren have always accepted the official verdict – accident. Besides, they have their own problems: beautiful Kate is ending a love-affair; her brother Daniel is painfully crippled.But then that letter comes to light. Only days before her death, somebody wrote and warned their grandmother that she was ‘opening a disastrous Pandora’s Box’ and should ‘let sleeping, and perhaps dangerous, dogs lie’. The letter goads...
