The mystery of Angelina Frood

About the book

Temporarily caring for another doctor's practice, the inexperienced Dr. Strangeways is summoned late at night to attend a woman whose condition is described evasively. The journey, the household, and the signs of injury all leave questions that ordinary professional discretion cannot quite settle. Later encounters connect that episode to Angelina Frood and an unhappy marriage, drawing the doctor toward dangers he initially understood only in fragments. Thorndyke's participation brings a more systematic investigation to circumstances already burdened with sympathy and suspicion. Freeman places medical observation within a story about how much can be inferred from partial access to other people's lives. This 1925 novel develops the mystery through the tension between disturbing appearances, personal concern, and evidence capable of sustaining an explanation.

• Medical observation
• Domestic secrecy
• Evidence and sympathy

Why read it

The narrator's uncertain first impressions make the later work of reconstructing events especially consequential.

English text of the Dodd, Mead 1925 edition