Wealthy but mean-spirited Mathilda Gillespie, a much-disliked resident of the English village of Fontwell, is found dead in her bathtub, her wrists slit and a "scold's bridle," a cruel medieval torture instrument, locked on her head. At first the police think it's suicide, but further investigation indicates the woman may have been murdered. The prime suspects are Mathilda's daughter, a cruel woman who hated her mother, and Mathilda's granddaughter, a deeply troubled teenager. Both women were in line to inherit Mathilda's considerable wealth and thus had a strong motive for wanting her dead. But when Mathilda's will reveals that she has left her money to her physician, Dr. Sarah Blakeney, suspicion focuses on Sarah, and it's up to the good doctor to prove who really killed the old woman. Although this story's not as riveting and dark as Walters' superb 1993 The Sculptress, it's a well-written, provocative, intelligent tale that focuses on the sometimes inexplicable effects of good, evil, love, and hate on the human psyche. ~--Emily Melton

Walters's The Sculptress (St. Martin's, 1993) won an Edgar Award. Here, a wealthy but despised Englishwoman is found dead, the victim of a medieval torture device once used to quiet talkative women. A 35,000-copy first printing. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Britain's Walters, whose The Sculptress won the 1993 Edgar for best novel, excels at depicting monstrously dysfunctional families and the murder and mayhem they wreak; and old Mathilda Gillespie's clan is a humdinger. The daughter of this bitter, snobbish, nasty-minded recluse is a prostitute on dope; the granddaughter's a schoolgirl being blackmailed into theft by a rapist lover. Gillespie's own past contains its share of feeblemindedness, violence, booze, abortion and incest. When the old woman is found dead in her bathtub, a peculiar medieval device over her head (the ``scold's bridle'' of the title), there is no shortage of suspects in her Dorset village. Both the local woman doctor, one of the few people who could tolerate the dead woman, and the cynical artist husband from whom she is separating spar with empathetic Detective Sgt. Cooper as they search for a killer. The fact that it takes these very bright people longer to figure out the perpetrator than it does a not-especially-smart reader is the chief strike against this otherwise intelligent and enjoyable-if slightly overplotted-mystery, which is essentially an English cozy with distinctly quirky overtones. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Dr. Sarah Blakeney, the physician who's attended caustic Mathilda Gillespie for the past year, is shaken when her patient is found dead in her bathtub, doped with liquor and barbiturates, wrists slit, and an elaborate cast-iron gag, the scold's bridle, carefully arrayed with flowers and clasped over her face. But Sarah, unhappy in her own domestic life with her husband, Jack, a brilliant, unsuccessful painter, has no idea how close to home this calamity will strike. When Sarah tells Jack she wants a divorce, genre-wise readers will settle back in anticipation of a running analogy between Mathilda's savagely miserable life--she was impregnated by her idiot uncle when she was 13--and Sarah's present woes. They're in for as big a shock as Sarah when a videotaped last-minute will names her as sole legatee at the expense of Mathilda's beautiful, parasitical daughter, Joanna Lascelles, and her sulky, thieving granddaughter, Ruth. Suddenly the police are cordially interested in Sarah, the Lascelleses coolly enraged at her, charming Jack (who's gone to stay with Joanna while he paints her portrait) a mass of outrageous contradictions, and Mathilda desperately enigmatic. As all the principals begin sensitively, articulately, to torment themselves and each other with their guilty suspicions, Walters (The Sculptress, 1993, etc.) draws out the complications with a master's hand until the monstrous pattern is completed with a final sickening jolt. The combination of surgical precision and ferocity will leave you gasping. Those with a taste for the deceptively civilized British whodunit will find Walters the most exciting discovery in years. ($50,000 ad/promo; author tour)