The perfect daughter - Gillian Linscott

Verona North had seemed the perfect daughter. She'd surprised her friends by leaving her home in Devon to attend art school in London, but they'd thought it was a normal youthful rebellion which wouldn't last very long. However when she did return home it was to die - pregnant and with her body full of morphine. Her cousin, Nell Bray, isn't wholly convinced she committed suicide and is positive she was not a drug addict. Unable to suppress her curiosity, Nell discovers that she was leading a double-life: on the one hand consorting with a group of bohemian artists and anarchists, and on the other collecting information on suspected 'enemies of the state' for the secret service.

Where did her real loyalties lies - with her family, her friends or her paymasters? What did she know which caused one of them to kill her, and who was the father of her child?

Gillian Linscott has been a journalist with the GUARDIAN and Parliamentary Correspondent with the BBC. Two Nell Bray novels have been dramatised on BBC Radio 4 and ABSENT FRIENDS was the winner of the CWA/Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award.

Just the right mix of period detail, character psychology and suspense
DAILY Express

Linscott writes like a rewarding angel
Sunday TIMES