The Hand in the Dark

About the book

The Heredith moat-house carries a long history of violence beneath its carefully preserved appearance. In the autumn of 1918, the younger generation brings guests and the habits of wartime London into that old setting, where Violet Heredith's dissatisfaction with country life contributes to an uneasy domestic atmosphere. Her murder transforms the household into a field of evidence, suspicion, and competing explanations. Detectives must reconstruct movements and motives while family status and personal concealment affect what can be learned. Rees gives the setting's inherited prestige a skeptical treatment, refusing to let its picturesque surface settle the moral character of those within it. The mystery develops through the gap between an apparently persuasive case and the details that still require explanation.

• Family reputation
• Evidence and inference
• Changing social order

Why read it

Read it for a country-house investigation that subjects both clues and inherited respectability to scrutiny.

English text