Author: Celia Fremlin
Publisher: Avon s275 Year: 1967 Print: 1 Cover Price: $0.60
Condition: Very Good Reading crease
Genre: Mystery

Cover by Mort Rosenfeld

Pages: 175

110612080E

The Trouble-Makers (1963) was Celia Fremlin's fourth novel and - as Chris Simmons contends in his new preface to this Faber Finds edition - has a case to be considered among her very best. Katharine is a suburban housewife, desultorily unemployed, unhappily married, struggling to keep up appearances but consoled to some degree by the even more aggravated woes of her next-door neighbour Mary - until, that is, Katharine is brought to the disturbing realisation that Mary's predicament is in fact substantially worse. "A cleverly devised story. A chorus of nicely-characterised suburban wives speculate on Mary's troubles. Fremlin builds up the whole thing into a crescendo of horror". (Sunday Times). "One again Fremlin shows how incomparably more chilling is her quiet, semifactual style than some of the hysterical sentimentalities from Over the Water". (Guardian).