Product Description

The award-winning author of The Babes in the Wood and The Rottweiler brings us another terrifically paced, richly drawn novel of suspense and psychological intrigue.

Weeks went by when Ismay never thought of it at all. Then something would bring it back or it would return in a dream. The dream always began in the same way.

She and her mother would be climbing the stairs, following Heather’s lead through the bedroom to what was on the other side, not a bathroom in the dream but a chamber floored and walled in marble. In the middle of it was a glassy lake. The white thing in the water floated towards her, its face submerged, and her mother said, absurdly, “Don’t look!”
The dead man was Ismay’s stepfather, Guy. Now, nine years on, she and her sister, Heather, still live in the same house in Clapham. But it has been divided into two self-contained flats. Their mother had lived upstairs with her sister, Pamela. And the bathroom, where Guy had drowned, had disappeared.

Ismay worked in public relations, and Heather in catering. They got on well. They always had. They never discussed the changes to the house, still less what had happened that August day. . .

But even lives as private as these, where secrets hang in the air like dust, intertwine with other worlds and other individuals. And, with painful inevitability, the truth will emerge.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #370398 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-14
• Released on: 2006-11-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Three-time Edgar Award–winner Rendell (13 Steps Down) often creates fragile characters, trembling on the edge of losing a lover, child, job, solvency or sanity. Slashing through their world is a wild card, an obsessive or a sociopath too focused on personal gain to be concerned with damage to others. The vulnerable people at the heart of this taut and enticing stand-alone are the Sealand family, particularly Heather, who's assumed to have drowned her unsavory stepfather, Guy, in the bath while he was weak with illness. A veritable pack of wild cards—including Marion Melville, who cozies up to the lonely and aged in hopes of inheriting their estates after she's poisoned them, and Marion's Dumpster-diving brother, Fowler—keeps everyone off guard. Rendell enlivens the tale with subplots involving various romances—ardent and desperate—and a killer who lurks in London's parks, as well as with pithy comments about class, technology, generational conflict, food and aesthetics. The plot twists in this electrifying read reach all the way to the last page. (July)
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From AudioFile
Sisters Ismay and Heathers stepfather is found drowned in the bathtub. Ismay believes her 13-year-old sister killed him, but the coroner rules out unnatural causes. Years later, the sisters share the house--now two flats --with their schizophrenic mother and her caregiver sister. Rosalyn Landor narrates, offering listeners perfect vocal portraits of Ismay and Heather, the men in their lives, their mothers and their aunts. Landors voice is rich and creamy, an excellent fit for Ruth Rendells subtlety and wry humor. Fragile sanity, romance, ulterior motives, menace, manipulation, and murder highlight Rendells latest psychological Chinese box. More than a suspense or mystery story, Rendells novel offers deep insights into people, and Landors spot-on performance explores the corrosive effects of secrets, delusion, and guilt. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
The prolific (and never, ever boring) Rendell delivers another gripping tale of psychological suspense, this one centering on murder within a family. It begins with a house, the scene of a bathtub murder, but it ends with the tsunami in Indonesia. In between, Rendell's characters are forced to reflect on the hopelessness of the past ever being washed away. The central event takes place long before the book opens: a 13-year-old girl drowns her stepfather in the bathtub. That girl, Heather, is grown up, as is her sister, Ismay. The scene of the crime has been boarded up as a room, and the family lives without acknowledging that the crime has been boarded up as well. What are the effects of this silent domestic pact? Rendell explores this question to creepy-crawly effect, as Heather prepares to marry. Ismay, conflicted over whether she should tell the fiance about her sister's past, struggles with the question of whether Heather is likely to kill again. Combining potent imagery and exquisite plotting, Rendell twists the knife of suspense in a wonderfully excruciating way. Connie Fletcher
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