A Dark-adapted Eye

(Paperback)

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A 30 year anniversary edition of the award-winning first novel by Barbara Vine - the creator of the modern psychological thriller. Newly packaged, and with a foreword by Val McDemid. 'A rich, complex and beautifully crafted novel' P.D. James Vera Hillyard. My aunt, and murderess. Faith Severn's life has long been overshadowed by the scandal of her aunt's execution for murder. For nearly 25 years she has tried to forget the woman she once spent her holidays with, who seemed such a perfect mother and caring sister. Now the time has come to piece together the mystery. What secret caused two devoted sisters to turn from love to bitter hatred Was Vera born a killer...or was she driven to it And can anyone ever really know the truth Written in 1986, and set against the morally and politically tumultous backdrop of 1940s England, Ruth Rendell's first novel writing as Barbara Vine is a psychological masterpiece, a study in the dangers of a society in thrall to ideas of female respectability. This newly packaged 30 year anniversary edition comes with a foreword by the acclaimed writer Val McDermid.

Reviews

Compulsively readable ... a carefully devised plot unfolded with the most cunning art. Wilkie Collins and Dickens would have admired it * Sunday Times *
Brilliantly plotted. Vine is not afraid to walk down the mean streets of the mind and can build up an almost tangible atmosphere of menace and unease * Daily Telegraph *
Will linger in your memory long after you have closed the book. A first-rate novel * Washington Post *
[Vine has a] dizzying ability to lock on to minds in chaos and snare us in their whorls of dread and doubt * Telegraph *

Author Bio

Barbara Vine was the pen-name of Ruth Rendell, and Viking published all of her books under that name. Rendell was an exceptional crime writer, with worldwide sales of approximately 20 million copies, and regular Sunday Times bestsellers. Rendell won numerous awards, including the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for 1976's best crime novel with A Demon in My View, a Gold Dagger award for Live Flesh in 1986, and the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990. In 2013 she was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in crime writing. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer. Ruth Rendell died in May 2015.