Book description
When newly married young woman Frances Aldridge loses her husband in a
freak car accident, friends persuade her that a holiday in the United
States would help her to recover her vitality.
Deciding to travel by bus, she chooses a route which transverses the
vast American landscape, from New York to Colorado. As she crosses the
States she begins to fall in love with their splendour, and on the bus,
she encounters many friendly people who share their stories, including
Jim Field - strangely enigmatic in this open country, handsome and
travelling with a companion who she takes to be his mother.
One night in Cleveland, Frances is woken abruptly in the middle of the
night, by what she thinks is the door to her hotel room clicking shut.
The next morning, she discovers that her pearl earrings are missing. She
does not bother to report this minor theft, but is appalled to read in
the news a few days later that an elderly woman had been murdered in the
same hotel the very night she had been there.
In the dramatic story that unfolds, Frances finds herself increasingly
feeling as though she is being followed, state to state, city to city .
. . and murder to murder. Josephine Bell was born Doris Bell Collier
in Manchester, England. Between 1910 and 1916 she studied at Godolphin
School, then trained at Newnham College, Cambridge until 1919. At the
University College Hospital in London she was granted M. R.C. S. and L.
R.C. P. in 1922, and a M. B. B. S. in 1924.
Bell was a prolific author, writing forty-three novels and numerous
uncollected short stories during a forty-five year period.
Many of her short stories appeared in the London Evening Standard
. Using her pen name she wrote numerous detective novels beginning in
1936, and she was well-known for her medical mysteries. Her early books
featured the fictional character Dr. David Wintringham who worked at
Research Hospital in London as a junior assistant physician. She helped
found the Crime Writers' Association in 1953 and served as chair during
1959-60.
