An Afternoon to Kill

the long version

> Lancelot Jones was on his way to his first job as tutor to an Indian Rajah's son. But the Rajah's ancient plane and incompetent pilot decanted him in the middle of a desert, and the wrong desert at that. There, seeking shade, he found, in the only dwelling of any size within miles, a curious old Englishwoman called Alva Hine. >Alva Hine buttonholed the prim Mr Jones as the Ancient Mariner once made a wedding guest his audience. She told him a strange story of a summer fifty years ago, of love and hate and murder in a respectable middle-class Victorian household... >Julian Symons describes this masterly tour-de-force, first published in 1953, as 'that rarity, a totally original work of crime fiction. It may enthral, amuse or annoy you,' he says, 'but you will have read nothing else quite like it.'