Book description
The Lawrences were newcomers to the town. Nobody knew much about them.
Old Mr Lawrence was seventy and had had a stroke which deprived him of
his powers of speech, and he was being looked after by his
daughter-in-law. This much Lucy Summers was aware of when she went round
to the house for her first appointment as his physiotherapist. What she
was not prepared for was the shock of seeing the old man sitting in his
wheelchair in the garden desperately trying to steal the crusts off the
bird-table with his good hand.
Is old Mr Lawrence simply senile? Or is he being systematically starved
to death by his neat and civil daughter-in-law? You don’t get a straight
answer to a question like that, so Lucy enlists the aid of Geoff Harris,
one of the local GPs. He has a word with the district nurse, and the
local Social Services are deployed under the wilfully independent
generalship of Mrs Chandler, who finds young Mrs Lawrence such a nice
client.
And then there’s a regrettable holiday accident and the questions the
town finds to ask about the Lawrence family are only just beginning . .
.
Josephine Bell is a past-master at the art of conveying something evil
nurturing itself behind, and indeed on, the bureaucratic routine of her
small town life, as Health Service talks to Social Service and local
vicar’s wife speculates to local estate agent’s wife and local newspaper
man snuffs the air. The result is a deadly tale in this popular author’s
most sharply observant vein.
“Miss Bell’s cool, clinical style is a delight.” Sunday Times
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.
