Margot Bennett – författare

Four men were due to fly to Dublin. When disaster struck and the plane went down over the Irish sea, only three of them were on board. With the identities of the flyers scattered to the winds, the police turn to the patchy account of the Wade family, whose memory of their past few days must hold the key to this elusive and tense mystery. Who was the man who didn’t fly? And what did he have to gain? Proof in one novel that Margot Bennett’s tight and suspenseful writing is long overdue rediscovery. Also includes the rare short story 'No Bath for the Browns'.

'There are a dozen clever deceptions in the book, twice as many as most writers would have given us.' - Julian Symons in Bloody MurderHugh Everton was intent on nothing more than quietly drinking in the second-rate hotel he found himself in on England's south coast - and then in walked his old flame Lucy and her new husband and ex-Judge, Gregory Bath. Entreated by Lucy to join her party for an evening back at the Bath residence, Hugh is powerless to resist, but when the night ends with the judge's inexplicable murder he is pitched back into a world of chaos and crime - a world he had tried to escape for good. First published in 1952, The Widow of Bath offers intricate puzzles, international intrigue and a richly evoked portrait of post-war Britain, all delivered with Bennett's signature brand of witty and elegant prose.

Then I felt his warm hand grow cold, it was as if he had been reminded of death. He wasn't looking at me any more, but obliquely, across the restaurant. I turned round.'Sarah has been receiving threatening anonymous letters, seemingly from a former lover. Just one day after revealing this information to her co-worker Nancy, Sarah is found shot in her bedroom by one of her past flames, Donald. Hearing the news and desperate to clear any evidence of Donald's presence at the scene due to her own infatuations, Nancy finds herself as the key suspect when she is discovered in the apartment.As the real killer uses the situation to their advantage, Bennett crafts a tense and nuanced story through flashbacks to Sarah's life and loves in this Gold-Dagger-award-winning, Hitchcockian story of deceit and murder.