Cruel Habitations - Tapa dura

To read Kate Charles's crime novels is to slide into a world of treacheours gentility...where the best of manners conceal the worst of intentions. (SUNDAY EXPRESS)

With her rich cast of well-developed characters and eloquent prose, British author Charles once again creates an absorbing mysteru sure to appeal... (PUBLISHERS WEEKLY)

A bloodstained version of the world of Barbara Pym. (THE GUARDIAN)

An intelligent and convincing story. (VAL MCDERMID)

The suffragette movement has been left the bequest of a valuable painting and, with much grumbling, Nell Bray agrees to collect it. The widower of their benefactress, Oliver Venn, lives with his nephews in a beautiful house in the Cotswolds filled with priceless antiques and objets d'art. But when Nell takes the canvas to Christie's she is told it is a copy, so with outrage and impatience she has to return to the Venn household. One of the nephews, who has just bizarrely jilted his fiancee in favour of a peasant fiddler to save her from poverty, suggests she steal the genuine painting. Somewhat against her better judgement, Nell agrees to the plan, finding that Daniel Venn has fulfilled his part of the bargain by leaving the house open. What he didn't warn her about was that the body of his new bride-to-be would be concealed in his uncle's study. Nell's distrust of the police and her insatiable curiosity forces her to undertake her own investigation into the killing. And she does succeed where the police have failed, but not before the finger of suspicion is laid on more than one wrong person, and someone else falls victim to the real killer.