A dark-adapted eye - ruth rendell

Dazzling.

writing at her formidable best, Barbara Vine taps the poetry as well as the pain of her characters clamorous declarations of their need for love.

--New York Times Book Review When the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world launched a second byline, she actually stepped up her writing a level.

--TIME Faith Severn has grown up with the dark cloud of murder looming over her family.

Her aunt Vera Hillyard, a rigidly respectable woman, was convicted and hanged for the crime, but the reason for her desperate deed died with her.

Thirty years later, a probing journalist pushes Faith to look back to the day when her aunt took knife in hand and walked into a childs nursery.

Through the eyes of a woman trying to understand an unspeakable, inexplicable family tragedy, Barbara Vine leads us through a shadow land of illicit lust, intimate sins, and unspoken passions--to a shattering and illuminating climax, as inevitable as it is unexpected.

In this enthralling masterpiece, a great crime writer has achieved both a flawlessly crafted novel of psychological suspense and a deeply probing work of literary art.