Dimensions
163 x 241 x 37mm
The first Lord Nanther clearly hoped to be the subject of an admiring posthumous biography. Having built a name for himself as Queen Victoria's favoured physician - expert on blood diseases and particularly the royal disease of haemophilia - he fastidiously set about recording the details of his eminent life, carefully cataloguing every significant letter, diary and medical essay that he'd written, apparently offering himself up as an open book.
But when the present Lord Nanther begins to research the life of his great-grandfather, he soon realises there is little of interest in his ancestor's dry-as-dust account. Indeed he begins to suspect that these old records conceal more than they reveal as he comes upon mysteries and anomalies in almost every decade of his great-grandfather's personal life.
As Martin Nanther begins to catch glimpses of "some monstrous, quite appalling things" in the blood doctor's past, so he realises that Henry died a guilty man - carrying a horrific secret to the grave.
Ruth Rendell, writing as Barbara Vine, has once again written a superbly satisfying psychological thriller. Set against the dramatic backdrop of the current House of Lords reform, this is an extraordinarily rich novel of politics and bad blood.
