Book description
In this modern-day Greek tragedy, the Fates play havoc with a
middle-aged English trio who have planned a restful and much-needed
holiday in Greece. Hugh Wilmot, his wife Florence, and her sister
Beatrice have secretly loathed one another for years. Confronted with
the pressures of new people and new places, their emotions rise to the
boiling point under the hot Aegean sun. As the time ripens for an
explosion, the catalyst turns out to be Greece herself, working through
film actress Rosamund Oakley, who is inadvertently cast in the role of
Aphrodite, Greek goddess of beauty, love, and mischief. Hugh, having met
Rosamund on a sight-seeing excursion, is attracted by her beauty and
mystery, which for him match and enhance his exotic new surroundings.
But almost immediately a strange series of events leads to three
gruesome murders-one in which a moral criminal figures, one in which the
intended victim is well and truly skewered, and finally a
murder-by-suicide. Another catalyst, this time in the guise of a
folk-singing couple with a clue to the identity of the crazed killer,
triggers the shattering resolution to this tale of three travellers who
found more hate than love among the ruins of ancient Greece.
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.
