The Brimstone Wedding

Sep 21, 2024 7:09 AM

Author:Barbara Vine

The Brimstone Wedding - a masterful mystery about love and madness by bestseller Barbara Vine

'Intriguing, absorbing and compelling' Spectator

Jenny's marriage is loveless, and she is having an affair. She works at an old people's home, where she is especially fond of Stella, a gracious, dignified woman dying of cancer - whose own secrets parallel Jenny's - with the difference that she may have been involved in murdering her lover's husband . . .

Both a finely crafted mystery and a disturbingly honest depiction of the kinship between love and madness, The Brimstone Wedding tells an unsettling story about the power and the poison of love. If you enjoy the crime novels of P.D. James, Ian Rankin and Scott Turow, you will adore this book.

'The Rendell/ Vine partnership has for years been producing consistently better work than most Booker winners put together' Ian Rankin

'A superb and original writer' Amanda Craig, Express

Barbara Vine is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell. She has written fifteen novels using this pseudonym, including A Fatal Inversion and King Solomon's Carpet which both won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. Her other books include: A Dark Adapted Eye; The House of Stairs; Gallowglass; Asta's Book; No Night Is Too Long; In the Time of His Prosperity; The Brimstone Wedding; The Chimney Sweeper's Boy; Grasshopper; The Blood Doctor; The Minotaur; The Birthday Present and The Child's Child.

Reviews

'Nabb's account of the details is freshly horrifying, as are many of the characters who people the book. The vicious, incestuous suspect is...so vivid on the page that the reader feels the need of a shower after each of his many appearances... One of the many wonderful things about this book is the impossibility of distinguishing between fact and fiction, but that is, after all, the nature of justice in Italy.'

—— Donna Leon , Sunday Times

'A haunting thriller where past and present collide, where ambition brutalises those who have most need of compassion and where lies are often more credible that truth'

—— Val McDermid , Manchester Evening News

'A brilliant detective story'

—— T J Binyon , Evening Standard

Credible, classy and compelling, this is crime fiction at its best

—— Sunday Times

'The wittiest of detective writers'

—— Daily Mail

Death in the Stocks is that rare and refreshing thing - a clever problem stated, developed and finally solved in terms of character

—— The Times

Miss Heyer's characters act and speak with an ease that is as refreshing as it is rare in the ordinary mystery novel

—— Times Literary Supplement

First-rate thriller, with the imperturbable Reacher meting out his brand of justice to the villains

—— Sunday Telegraph

An unflinching suspense thriller . . . Blindsighted is a promising debut, and Karin Slaughter is a novelist to watch

—— George P. Pelecanos

Terrifying...rarely have the mechanics of suspense been so efficiently utilised outside a Hitchcock movie

—— DAILY EXPRESS

Original, moving and entertaining for adults as well as for older children

—— Julia Donaldson , Daily Express

A deservedly acclaimed read.

—— Time Out London

'Haddon's book is a peculiar thing - a kind of James Joyce for kids - but a genre-busting gem, nevertheless'

—— The Observer

'Engaging, warm, humorous and poignant at the same time'

—— The Scotsman

'This book is amazing . . . A must read'

—— Martina Evans , Irish Post

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