Victim

Josephine Bell

May 2012 · Pan Macmillan

About this ebook

Mrs. Mellanby is beginning to feel like she is getting old. It is partly the house – her big Edwardian family home was too much for one person. But it’s her dearly loved garden that is breaking her heart, as it gradually becomes a burden, and she cannot bear to see it become neglected.

Sadly, but sensibly, she faces the facts and decides the time has come to sell up. A property developer who would put up a useful block of maisonettes seems an excellent prospective buyer and it’s not as if there aren’t flats in the road already. But Mrs. Mellanby has reckoned without the local Residents Protection Society and the virulence of their opposition. Her astonishment gives way first to pain and, ultimately, to terror as the victimisation increases and she feels in danger of losing her sanity – if not her life.

Josephine Bell builds up the tension in a small South Coast resort with a masterly hand.

About the author

Josephine Bell was born Doris Bell Collier in Manchester, England. Between 1910 and 1916 she studied at Godolphin School, then trained at Newnham College, Cambridge until 1919. At the University College Hospital in London she was granted M.R.C.S. and L.R.C.P. in 1922, and a M.B. B.S. in 1924.

Bell was a prolific author, writing forty-three novels and numerous uncollected short stories during a forty-five year period.

Many of her short stories appeared in the London Evening Standard. Using her pen name she wrote numerous detective novels beginning in 1936, and she was well-known for her medical mysteries. Her early books featured the fictional character Dr. David Wintringham who worked at Research Hospital in London as a junior assistant physician. She helped found the Crime Writers' Association in 1953 and served as chair during 1959-60.