October 2017
Ruth Rendell was an
acknowledged master of psychological suspense: these are ten (and a quarter) of
her most chillingly compelling short stories, collected here together for the
first time. In these tales, a businessman boasts about cheating on his
wife, only to find the tables turned. A beautiful country rectory reverberates
to the echo of a historical murder. A compulsive liar acts on impulse, only to
be lead inexorably to disaster. And a wealthy man finds there is more to his
wife's kidnapping than meets the eye.
Atmospheric, gripping and never predictable, this is Ruth Rendell at her
inimitable best. A Spot of Folly is by Ruth Rendell.
June 2018
The Case of the Purloined Brooch: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a
Sensational Glasgow Murder and the Quest for Justice by Margalit Fox.
On 21 December 1908 Marion Gilchrist, a wealthy 82-year-old spinster,
was found bludgeoned to death in her Glasgow home. There were no suspects and
no signs of forced entry, but a valuable diamond brooch was missing. Seventeen
years later a convict called William Gordon was released from Scotland's remote
Peterhead Prison: concealed in a false tooth and written on waterproof paper
minutely folded and tightly rolled, was an urgent message. It was from Oscar
Slater, the German Jew and part-time pimp, who had spent the previous 16 years
in Peterhead for Marion Gilchrist's murder. The message appealed for help from
the one man he believed could prove his innocence: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This
book is a vivid account, drawn entirely from contemporary sources, of Sir
Arthur's ultimately successful quest to overturn Slater's conviction, now
considered one of the great miscarriages of justice in Scottish history.
