An award-winning novel from a New York Times–bestselling author: The long-buried bodies of a woman and child are unearthed on a Suffolk country estate.
When the new owners of Wyvis Hall, a rural estate in Suffolk, set out to bury their pet dog on the grounds, they stumbled upon a ghastly relic: the bones of a woman and small child in a shallow grave. The gruesome find makes stunning headlines, especially so for the previous occupants.
A decade before, nineteen-year-old Adam Verne-Smith inherited the property and spent one debauched summer there with runaways, drifters, and his two best friends—none of whom have spoken since that fatal season. Adam is now a doting father and husband. His old buddy Rufus is a respectable doctor. And there’s Shiva, whose dreams of upward mobility drifted away. Unhinged by the discovery, they reunite, each with a protest of innocence. As the past slowly emerges, their regrets, desperation, and bitter incriminations get the best of them—and so will their secrets.
A master of “deep, disquieting insight into the pathological dynamics of love” (The New York Times), author Ruth Rendell’s Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award–winning A Fatal Inversion is “rife with lost Edens, family secrets and stifled sexual urges” (Chicago Tribune). It was adapted for television by the BBC in 1992.
Edgar Award–winning author Ruth Rendell (b. 1930) has written more than seventy books and sold more than twenty million copies worldwide. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (London), she is the recipient of the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Crime Writers’ Association. Rendell’s award-winning novels include A Demon in My View (1976), A Dark-Adapted Eye (1987), and King Solomon’s Carpet (1991). Her popular crime stories featuring Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford were adapted into a long-running British television series (1987–2000) starring George Baker.