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by Charlotte Williams
Jessica Mayhew has enough problems without getting wrapped up in her patients' drama. Her separation from her husband doesn't seem as amicable as she once thought, and her daughters are drifting away as fast as they're growing up. But her new client - chic, moody, obsessive painter Elinor Powell - has a way of drawing people in and soon Jessica's getting involved with what seems to be a most artful murder.
Elinor presents a rare professional challenge. She blames herself for keeping a valuable portrait in her studio, where her mother was killed in an unsolved robbery. An attack of claustrophobia is interfering with her work, as is her deepening paranoia about her twin sister, Isobel, and her brother-in-law, Blake, a ruthless art dealer. But when Jessica meets the entire unhappy family at the debut show of Blake's protégé - a reclusive ex-miner producing gloomy canvases in the Black Mountains of southeast Wales - she starts to wonder whether Elinor might be on to something. Might there be more to her mother's death? Could Blake have been involved? And just what's going on in those lonely hills?
Set against the otherworldly Welsh countryside, Black Valley is a novel rich in character, intrigue, and harrowing dangers.
"Williams's breezy style and her well-rendered details of rural Wales compensate for the mystery's overall lack of suspense. With Williams gone, this is presumably the last in the series." - Publishers Weekly
"Readers who enjoy atmospheric, psychological thrillers with well-developed characters will find this one to their liking." - Booklist
"For someone trained in reading subtle cues, Jess seems oblivious to the warning signs all around her. But her sleuthing does get her out of her office and into a complex puzzle that keeps you reading in spite of the plot contrivances." - Kirkus
"Black Valley underlines what an incisive creator of intense psychological drama Williams was... The story smoulders before bursting into flames as it reaches an exceptional climax." - Daily Mail (UK)
"Utterly gripping and psychologically acute." - The Guardian (UK)
"Last year, Charlotte Williams's The House on the Cliff promised much for her future in crime fiction. Her second novel Black Valley has fulfilled all expectations." - The Times (Ireland)
This information about Black Valley was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
After studying philosophy in college, Charlotte Williams went on to work as an arts journalist, writing for newspapers and magazines, and making documentaries for the BBC. More recently, she also worked in radio drama, writing original plays and adaptations. Williams died in 2014 at the age of fifty-nine.
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