What do You think about A Fatal Inversion (1992)?
Forgive the title, I thought, it's one of her first, you know you love her. And a book about a vaguely druggy 19 year old unexpectedly inheriting a vast English manor, populating it with friends and strangers, that's already a yes please. Then I spent the first half of the book yelling at it: stop repeating yourself, stop giving entire pages to describe a bloody copse, we've seen woods, even the deciduous forests you do describe particularly well, if endlessly - when I hit a patch of 5 pages including use of the word "ironical", I very nearly threw the book out the window. But the story hooked me despite, and while a more clever reader could have seen the twist at the end coming at them head on, there's me, mouth gaping, thinking "oh, I loved this," which I didn't. But worth slogging through the first half to get to the second, which is almost never the case!
—Gila Gila
I was drawn into this murder mystery. It was a great experience - listening to the book during my daily jogs. Am glad that I listened to the audio version because otherwise I would have just rushed through the book, in my usual speed-reading mode, sometimes even missing certain aspects. A wonderful psychological thriller, which shows how even gentle, normal people can commit crimes, if circumstances arise. I loved the descriptions of Acalpamos (not sure of the spelling) and wished i owned it. I would have loved a remote bungalow in the wilderness as a holiday home. I was drawn into the lives of Adam, Rufus, Zosie, Shiva and Vivian for the past few days.
—Ahtims
This is one of Barbara Vine's earlier richly crafted novels. Her writing is elegant and skillfully constructed. "A Fatal Inversion" is not an ordinary mystery with a familiar plot, it is a chilling psychological study which gives the reader insight into a horrifying murder. It is compelling and certainly thought-provoking.A landowner in the English countryside discovers an old pet cemetery on his vast property, where he finds human bones also buried. This fact and the subsequent police investigation set this story into motion. The manor house had been inherited by a nineteen year old young man previously. During an idyllic summer, he and a group of young people lived a carefree, irresponsible existence there, selling household contents to provide money for sustenance snd entertainment. It was here that the murder occured, which is evident at the outset of this book. Vine has masterfully woven this suspenseful tale back and forth from that summer to a dozen years later when the surviving members fear revelation. Character development is richly drawn, adding to the atmosphere of tension.
—Barbara
