Book description
Ziggy and Gladys Crackjaw, in their late seventies, living in squalid
isolation on the outskirts of Byland, a remote East Anglian village,
suddenly disappear. Their pension books on the living room mantelpiece,
indicative of an intended return, mystify the local police in the
persons of Detective Chief Inspector Douglas Quantrill, Head of Breckham
Market CID, and his cool and elegant sergeant, Hilary Lloyd. Do the
smears of blood on the floor and iron fender in front of the fireplace
indicate domestic violence? Janet Thacker, the brisk village
sub-postmistress, who spent her youth in Byland but who now pretends to
know nothing about the Crackjaws and their eight children, is Hilary
Lloyd's first target for interrogation. The extraordinary story of a
primitive yet aspiring rural childhood and adolescence emerges from the
pages of a 'stolen' manuscript to lead Quantrill and Lloyd to a solution
to the mystery of the missing Crackjaws. In this lucidly written,
heartfelt, dual narrative, Sheila Radley has transcended the boundaries
of the traditional crime novel to produce a story of poignant, universal
appeal. Sheila Radley was born and brought up in rural
Northamptonshire, one of the fortunate means-tested generation whose
further education was free. She went from her village school via high
school to London University, where she read history. She served for nine
years as an education officer in the Women's Royal Air Force, then
worked variously as a teacher, a clerk in a shoe factory, a civil
servant and in advertising. In the 1960s she opted out of conventional
work and joined her partner in running a Norfolk village store and post
office, where she began writing fiction in her spare time. Her first
books, written as Hester Rowan, were three romantic novels; she then
took to crime, and wrote 10 crime novels as Sheila Radley.
