Most Loving Mere Folly

A post-WWII love affair is eroded by suspicions of murder, from the Edgar Award–winning author of the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael.

Talented potter Suspiria Freeland and her painter husband, Theo, survived the Blitz and are living among fellow artists in a bombed-out London suburb. But since the war’s terror ended, Theo’s drunken self-loathing has become even harder for his long-suffering wife to bear.

When Dennis Forbes enters their lives, Suspiria is immediately drawn to the handsome young mechanic. Though he obviously shares her passionate attraction, he is fourteen years her junior and she, of course, is married . . . until Theo’s lifeless body is discovered.

Theo’s death from poison leaves his widow free to love and marry her much younger paramour. But their newfound happiness is soon threatened on all sides—by a community’s gossip and mistrust, by a legal system determined to enact justice at any price, and by the lovers themselves, as suspicion continues to mount that one of them is a murderer.

This stand-alone novel of forbidden love, suspicion, and suspense is further evidence why the Financial Times called Edgar, Agatha, and Gold Dagger Award–winning author Ellis Peters “a cult figure of crime fiction.”