Ladies' bane - Patricia Wentworth

CLASSIC GOLDEN AGE MYSTERY PERFECT FOR FANS OF AGATHA CHRISTIE

Miss Silver must unravel a tangled web of marriage, mystery and murder

'Ranks with the best of the golden-age detectives' Daily Mail

No one has seen Allegra Trent since she got married. Her husband swept her off her feet and out of London, to a faraway town called Bleake. She has stopped writing letters, and her family has begun to worry.

Allegra's husband is a strange man. He is consumed with his dream of owning the ramshackle estate curiously known as Ladies' Bane, and he intends to use his new wife's money to do it. Why he wants to live there no one knows, but Josepha Bowden does not want his castle to become her goddaughter's prison.

She asks the help of Maud Silver, the former governess who now makes a living using her reason to unravel the intricacies of murder. There has been no killing in Bleake, but if Miss Silver doesn't intervene quickly, there could be one soon.

'A first-rate storyteller' Daily Telegraph

'You can't go wrong with Miss Maud Silver' Observer

'Miss Silver is marvellous' Daily Mail

'Better than Miss Marple' Mary Stewart

'A particular favourite' Andrew Taylor

'Miss Wentworth's plot is ingenious, her characterization acute, her solution satisfying' Scotsman

'Miss Silver has her place in detective fiction as surely as Lord Peter Wimsey or Hercule Poirot' Manchester Evening News