A woman is observed running from Larapinta Creek Bridge; then the body of a very unpleasant fourteen-year old girl is found, drowned. Did the girl fall into the water by accident? Or was she pushed?
Attractive, blonde Gabriel Endicott is an apparently wealthy young widow, a newcomer to Australia's Larapinta district where everyone else seems to know the neighbors very well indeed. The next day she receives a newspaper clipping in the mail about the drowning. The clipping ends with the enigmatic statement that the police are anxious to interview a woman seen running from the bridge over the creek, "a young, fair-haired woman wearing a white dress."
Gabriel doesn't know who would have sent her this news. Or the subsequent envelopes containing information about the death of young Carol Zamia. But she was wearing a cream-colored suit and had walked near the bridge that night. Now the police, the town, everyone, seems to suspect her of complicity in the girl's death. Either she pushed Carol or, aware of an accident, she failed to rescue her. Gabriel's efforts to free herself from suspicion only arouse more doubts as to her innocence, even in those who want most to believe in her.
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Review:
The Running Woman, a perfectly turned vessel full of taut psychological suspense, should wake readers up to the talents of Australia's Patricia Carlon, who belongs on the same shelf as Ruth Rendell, P. D. James, and Minette Walters. Who was the woman in white that witnesses saw running from the scene when a 14-year-old girl fell from a wooden bridge and drowned in a flooded creek in a rural Australian town? Early on we meet Gabriel Endicott, a young widow with lots of money and some emotional problems, and begin to suspect, like her sensible cousin Phil, that she was the running woman. But gradually we begin to realize that something else is going on--that Phil isn't all that he seems, that the girl who drowned was a nasty piece of work, and that Gabriel is in great danger. Carlon plays on our nerve endings like a superb cellist, as she did in her previous books, The Souvenir and The Whispering Wall.
About the Author:
Patricia Carlon was born in Wagga Wagga and now lives in Sydney. She has written fourteen crime novels. This is Crime of Silence's first publication in the United States.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherSoho Press
- Publication date1998
- ISBN 10 156947110X
- ISBN 13 9781569471104
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages187
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Rating