The Man who Looked Back

the long version

Throughout this story of planned, deliberate action is woven a strand of chance. The factor 'x', which might be enough to make a murderer and to hang him, was an incalculable element which Roy Unithorne was too wise to neglect but unable to control. For it was possible that if Islay Brown had not come to convalesce at Saffron-on-Sea Roy would have remained an undistinguished householder, clipping the golden privet and weeding amongst the clay gnomes in his neat little home. Nor was the careless exuberance of Lady Alice Pewsey's sudden friendliness and the impact of a more glamorous existence without its influence. And there was something of the wanton purposefulness of fate in the wanderings of Arthur, the black cat, whose devotion to his mistress did not stop short at death. In this book as much a study of character as a novel of suspense Joan Fleming traces the shadows of selfishness and conceit merging together beneath a commonplace exterior to form the pattern of a cold and competent murderer.