Imprint
- Sphere
- Sphere
Fiction, Crime & mystery
Margaret Yorke delivers incredibly tense and chilling novels of suspense, delving into the darker recesses of the human psyche, as extraordinary events collide with everyday lives. Winner of the 1999 Cartier Diamond Dagger for her outstanding contribution to the crime fiction genre.
Peaceful Mickleburgh is the perfect English market town - or so it seems. In fact, it is a perfectly constructed fa ade, having successfully hidden the secrets of its inhabitants for generations. But the casual murder of a man trying to prevent an act of vandalism shatters the genteel appearance.
Parents are forced to consider whether their children could be involved, friends avoid each other's eyes, and partners word their conversations carefully. Somebody in the community is close to the murderer - someone with a past that threatens to resurface, bringing damage and devastation to a whole community.
Praise for Act of Violence
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Building to a highly-charged climax it shows how the placid surface of a community can hide beneath it the seeds of catastrophe. Well judged and expertly written - Irish Times
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Margaret Yorke also has similarities to Patricia Highsmith... Her books have a quiet fatalism, rather than the terrible menace of Highsmith's stories, but are almost as frightening - Guardian
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Typical Yorke story-telling; and there is no one better at it - Birmingham Post
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What makes this novel unusual is not the common enough mindless violence but the sensitivity and insight with which Yorke explores the emotions within a small community... Subtly woven into the plot is another, darker threat, providing the surprise ending that is itself an act of violence on the reader's imagination - Daily Express
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