A Dark-Adapted Eye

"Dazzling...writing at her formidable best, Barbara Vine taps the poetry as well as the pain of her characters' clamorous declarations of their need for love." --New York Times Book Review "When the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world launched a second byline, she actually stepped up her writing a level." --TIME Faith Severn has grown up with the dark cloud of murder looming over her family. Her aunt Vera Hillyard, a rigidly respectable woman, was convicted and hanged for the crime, but the reason for her desperate deed died with her. Thirty years later, a probing journalist pushes Faith to look back to the day when her aunt took knife in hand and walked into a child's nursery. Through the eyes of a woman trying to understand an unspeakable, inexplicable family tragedy, Barbara Vine leads us through a shadow land of illicit lust, intimate sins, and unspoken passions--to a shattering and illuminating climax, as inevitable as it is unexpected. In this enthralling masterpiece, a great crime writer has achieved both a flawlessly crafted novel of psychological suspense and a deeply probing work of literary art.

• | Author: Ruth Rendell
• | Publisher: Plume Books
• | Publication Date: Oct 01, 1993
• | Number of Pages: 288 pages
• | Binding: Paperback or Softback
• | ISBN-10: 0452270642
• | ISBN-13: 9780452270640