Book description
Nobody ever bothered much with the girl who liked to call herself
Lesley. She had spent all her life as a parcel being passed between
children’s homes and foster parents. Certainly no-one cared enough to
report the fact when she finally walked out of her foster parents’
Midland corner shop and, like so many young hopefuls before her, set out
for London. Lesley added a new surname, Rivers, and with a few pilfered
pound notes, had not much else to help her get on in a bewildering big
city. And that was when she encountered the Holy Group and their
depressing but convenient South London hostel.
Josephine Bell tells a disquieting story of a quasi-religious sect and
the way it preys on the minds of the immature, the disturbed and the
innocent. Circumstances have fortunately given Lesley Rivers a well
developed sense of self-preservation, and she needs every ounce of this
to survive a horrific ceremony presided over by the sect’s sinister
Ruler. However, when she eventually gets a job in the local health food
shop, Lesley is to find that the drama is only just beginning.
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.
