Times are looking lean for Cassie Swann. With the bridge supplies business in a slump and no new sources of income on the horizon, she's shocked to find herself cadging drinks off OAPs. But her own problems are forgotten when one of her bridge group, Lolly Haden White, starts seeming very distressed. Are her lapses of memory and dark moods simply a consequence of growing old, or is there something more sinister behind her sudden decline? Realizing that she knows next to nothing about Lolly's history, Cassie decides to do a little investigating, only to find that Lolly has done a remarkable job of covering up the details of her early life - in particular the time she spent in Africa as a young woman. Cassie begins to suspect that some long-suppressed secret from those days has come back to haunt Lolly - and when a brutal murder shocks the village, Cassie is convinced that the evil Lolly long ago battled against has to be confronted again.
About the Author: Susan Moody began writing crime novels with Penny Black, the first of the seven Penny Wanawake crime novels. Takeout Double, the first of the Cassandra Swann series, was published in 1993, and followed by Grand Slam, King of Hearts, Doubled in Spades, Sacrifice Bid and Dummy Hand. Susan has also written a number of short stories. Her first acclaimed suspense novel was Playing With Fire, and was followed with equal success by Hushaby, House of Moons and The Italian Garden. All of them were translated in several languages. Susan achieved a long-standing ambition to produce a best-seller, with Love Over Gold, the story of the Gold Blend coffee couple! This sold nearly 200,000 copies worldwide and made the Sunday Times best-seller list. It was unfortunate that she chose to write it under a pseudonym. She has also written a sequel to Francis Hodgson Burnett's children's classic, the Secret Garden. Misslethwaite was shortlisted for the annual award of the Romantic Novelists' Association and sold over 50,000 soft back copies in the first month of publication. It was published in the US as Return to the Secret Garden. In all, she has published 34 novels, most of them crime and suspense. Susan spent two years as a Creative Writing Tutor in Her Majesty's Prison, Bedford. She is a past Chairman of the Crime Writers' Association, serving in all as a CWA Committee member for seven years. She is a long-standing member of the prestigious Detection Club and served for three years as the President of the International Association of Crime Writers. In 2000, she published The Colour of Hope, which was phenomenally successful and sold in 20 different Countries. In the last five years, she has published Dancing In the Dark, Losing Nicola, Loose Ends, A Final Reckoning and Quick and the Dead. Her latest novel is called Quick Off the Mark and is published by Severn House. She spent a semester in Tasmania, Australia, as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Tasmania, has taught a course in the Crime Novel at the University of Copenhagen, has given a master-class in crime writing on Meridian TV, and has led many courses and workshops in creative and crime writing in England, the US and Australia. Susan is married to mathematician, Professor John Donaldson, who has three daughters and one son, as well as twelve grandchildren. Susan has one grandchild of her very own. She divides her time between south-west France and south-east Kent.