Jessica Mann (1937-2018) originally earned degrees in archaeology, Anglo-Saxon, and law and worked in various fields in the UK, including as a Planning Inspector. She later turned her hand to writing crime fiction, and her novel, A Charitable End, was published in 1971, with some 20 novels published up to 2013. She was also a well-known and respected radio and television broadcast, particularly her radio program, "Women of Mystery," and authored a treatise on women crime writers entitled Deadlier than the Male.
She wrote reviews for The Literary Review, and once published an essay that she would no longer review certain types of crime fiction due to the misogyny and violence against women, saying, "Authors must be free to write and publishers to publish. But critics must be free to say they have had enough. So however many more outpourings of sadistic misogyny are crammed on to the bandwagon, no more of them will be reviewed by me."
A Private Inquiry dates from 1996 and was shortlisted for the Gold Dagger that year. It's set mainly in St. Ives, in Cornwall, near where Mann herself has lived for several years. At its heart, the novel is a tale of psychological suspense involving four women whose disparate lives intersect in a twisted scheme of blackmail, missing persons, double identity, a perverse game of victim and oppressor, a child's death, and ultimately, murder.
Mann deftly weaves complex psychological characterizations into the mix, such as the following comment from one of the main characters, a child psychologist:
Men showed themselves as they really were in bed. No doubt women did too, but Fidelis had been strictly heterosexual. Children, however, she could understand while keeping a proper and professional distance from them, observing and interacting across a desk, on the playing mat, at the zoo. But to know an adult, she had always needed intimacy. Fidelis's sexual life was over now and she was afraid she might have become a bad judge of character as a result.
The adroitly twisted plot provides plenty of social commentary and an intriguing look into how the losses and sins of youth shape the dysfunctional adults we become.
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