In sickness and in health

by Ruth Rendell

Hardcover, 1966

DDC/MDS

823/.9/14

823/.9/14

Publication

Garden City, N.Y. : Published for the Crime club by Doubleday & company, inc., 1966.

Original publication date

1966

Description

Alice Whittaker was 37, rich but dowdy, with no career. Her life a lonely failure, she had got by with the one thing she did have - money. Then handsome Andrew Fielding came into her life, just as suddenly her beautiful friend, Nesta, vanished from it - leaving a trail of confusing clues.

Status

Available

Call number

823/.9/14

Collection

Genres

User reviews

LibraryThing member MiserableLibrarian

Alice Whittaker is sure that something dreadful has happened to her friend Nesta, from whom she hasn’t heard in a while. Her search leads her to suspect her much-younger husband, and at times her brother and uncle. An enjoyable little book (fewer than 200 pages), and one of Rendell’s earlier

works.

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LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd

Not one of my favorite Rendells. It was a pretty good read for the first 2/3 or so...then I began to suspect there was less going on than met the eye, especially the eye of the very wealthy, slightly paranoid woman from whose point of view we see things. Alice Whittaker and her brother Hugo are

heirs to a substantial fortune rising from a successful business currently run by their uncle. On the very brink of perpetual spinsterhood, Alice has married a handsome man 9 years her junior, who treats her well and shows every sign of being truly in love with her. Perhaps she can't be blamed for wondering if it was really her money and her prospects...but when her more out-going and somewhat man-hungry friend Nesta seems to have disappeared, when Alice herself begins suffering mysterious bouts of violent illness, her suspicions grow wildly and she sees murderous intent not only in Andrew, but in Hugo and possibly even her own doctor. The denouement is a bit of a fizzle.

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