A highly influential CWA Gold-Dagger award-winning novel returns to print in this atmospheric 1960's title, featuring period detail and a dark, modern edge to the story. It's the second novel from the unjustly neglected author Mary Kelly, following the ingenious The Christmas Egg.

Staffordshire in the 1950's. Within the clay tanks at the pottery company Shentall’s, a body has been found. Amid cries of industrial espionage and sabotage of this leader of the pottery industry, there is a case of bitter murder to solve for Inspector Hedley Nicholson.

Kelly’s mystery won the CWA Gold Dagger Award in 1961 for its impeccable sense of place and detail, and for the emotional weight of its central crime. The novel is part of a shift from the cosiness of crime novels before to mysteries characterised by their psychological interest and affecting realism. An influential classic.

Published: May 2020

Author: Mary Kelly with an introduction by Martin Edwards

Brand: British Library Publishing

Number of pages: 224 pages

Binding: Paperback

Dimensions: 190 x 130 mm