A Dark-Adapted Eye

Writing under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell departs from her famous detective team of Wexford and Burden to tell a gripping tale of family madness. Vera Hillyard is a domineering and possessive woman who strives for obsessive control over a malicious older son, a youngest son who is--or isn't--illegitimate, and her younger sister, Eden, who secretly seeks to escape Vera's grasp and instead provokes a murder. This winner of the 1986 Edgar Award for best mystery novel belongs to the genre of old murders reconsidered and the question of who did what to whom and why is teasingly left unresolved.

Barbara Vine is the pseudonym of Ruth Rendell. Considered by many to be Britain's greatest living crime writer, Rendell was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger for a lifetime's achievement in crime writing in 1991, which sits nicely next to her four Gold Daggers and one Silver Dagger, and her three Edgar Allen Poe Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, including a Grandmaster Award from the aforementioned MWA.