Minette Walters is incapable of writing a bad book. This one has been up in the closet, gathering dust for over a year, so I can't remember all the details anymore, but it was a great read.

Up for grabs on the bookrelay site.

Sending this to Martie-Kr as part of a book relay. Enjoy!

Received today in mail from fellow bookcrosser pchemphd from the Book Relay. Thanks much. TBR.

Sorry for the long delay in getting to this one. I liked this book. It's my first read of this author and I will probably look for more books by her.

Richly drawn characters and an intertwined plot line that kept me guessing. Enjoyable.

Synopis from back: Few tears fall when rich, spiteful old Mathilda Gillespie's bloody corpse is found in her bathtub, her wrists slit and the ancient scold's bridle clamed on her head. It seems Mathilda's favorite heirloom was also an instrument of torture from the Middle Ages, an iron cage used to gag yapping women. Among the Dorset villagers, only Sarah Blakeney, Mathilda's doctor for her final year, seems even mildly distrubed that the miserable nag has been muzzled forever.

But suicide starts to look like homicide, and Sarah's sorrow seems a bit contrived when the bombshell drops that Mathilda has disinherited her daughter and granddaughter, leaving her entire fortune to Sarah.

Now the object of vicious gossip and the police's prime suspect, Sarah must prove her innocence by delving into Mathilda's past to unmask the real kiler. What she finds beneath the sleepy village facade is a poupourri of blackmail and perversion......

Released on Sunday, July 11, 2004 at Martie-Kr's Mystery Bookbox #3 in Bookbox, Postal Release Controlled Releases.

taken from a bookbox