Josh and Maisie Evans are Good Samaritans and enjoy lending a helping hand to lonely elderly ladies. After all, the Evanses don’t want Lena getting a whiff of what’s actually happening back at the house in case she disturbs things. Subtle eeriness and unsettling feeling throughout but it never really amounted to much and felt slightly repetitive - but maybe the point was to highlight the monotony of Mrs Fingal’s sad life with the Evanses? But maybe I've read too much of this sort of thing lately as I was definitely hoping for something darker. It is a frightening prospect and Dale realises how easily the seam of respectability can be played by fraudsters out for their own ends.

The novel’s first chapter is a masterclass in suburban unease, crammed with pension books and newspapers and tapestry footstools. For those who think they’ve seen everything the crime genre has to offer, this is an example of how it can keep rewarding.To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Line by line, you're entertained by the characters, the setting and the dialogue itself - - but there's that underlying creepiness.

It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance. While the usual elements of a standard crime story will not be found in this novel, what happens here certainly falls within the realm of the genre, and given that this book was written in the 1960s, it remains extremely pertinent in our contemporary world which makes what happens even more frightening. Her writing is subtle, clear, beautiful at times, engrossing even when her characters repeat themselves.

Dales first book appeared in 1943 but it was her later novels where she branched out in to the realms of psychological crime. A middle aged couple take in an elderly woman they befriend in Italy, with no good motive behind their actions. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. During their break, Maisie and Josh attach themselves to another pair of British holidaymakers – the elderly widow Cynthia Fingal and her rather selfish niece, Lena.