There is no shortage of suspects when Jasmine Woods – an attractive, successful romantic novelist – is found by her anguished young secretary, Alison, savagely murdered. Though men were attracted to her and women liked her company, their feelings were often ambivalent, as Alison’s father, Chief Inspector Douglas Quantrill, and his clever young assistant, Martin Tait, both observed at a party celebrating Jasmine’s latest novel. Her cousin, a failed playwright, resented her riches; her neighbour, intellectual television pundit Jonathan Elliott, despised her kind of fiction; his feminist wife Roz hated its old-fashioned message. Even Quantrill himself resented the fact that his wife was more roused by Jasmine’s fictional heroes than by himself . . .
So when Jasmine’s body is discovered, one morning some months later, Quantrill and Tait set to work to interview those hostile friends; to trace valuable oriental ornaments missing from her disordered living-room; and through her former secretary Anne, now engaged to a local farmer, to learn about the men in Jasmine’s life. But as he unravels these strands of the mystery, Quantrill is weighed down by the tangle of fear and concern he feels for his wife, and for his daughter.
Against a beautiful and loving portrait of the Suffolk countryside Sheila Radley sets her absorbing story of mystery, love and violence.