Death in the Garden

Jennie Melville

See more book details
21 May 2015
0 pages

Edwina, Cassie and Alice, three young women who had become an inseparable trio, shared a birthday, success in their respective professions and a belief that nothing could change their relationship.

Then Edwina's lover Tim, father of her unborn child, died in a road crash. All three received anonymous telephone calls and at the reception for Edwina's father's second marriage their publicity agent drank poisoned whisky, dying in agony. They found themselves sharing at least one more experience, that of being murder suspects.

As the police investigate the killing amongst the residents and workers of Covent Garden, where all three women conduct their business, the nameless caller concentrates on Edwina and in such a menacing way that she decides to run. But she cannot hide from the caller, or from her friends, or from the man who wants to replace Tim in her life, and when another killing occurs she returns to the familiar, but now claustrophobic, surroundings of the Garden and to increasing danger.

Jennie Melville was renowned for creating suspense novels full of tension and atmosphere and startling insights into the human mind. Here she is at the top of her form in a whodunit that is intriguing, surprising and wholly satisfying.

The chummy threesome of Covent Garden career girls develops a few cracks after their publicity agent drinks poisoned whisky at a society wedding and a sinister midnight whisperer puts the frighteners on Edwina. The special Melville touch, acupuncture dialogue, feline insights, stealthily mounting suspense.

Christopher Wordsworth - Observer

Jennie Melville cleverly conveys the village atmosphere that surrounds - indeed isolates - its inhabitants . . . the three main figures are sympathetically delineated, and the central plot is neat.

William Weaver - Financial Times