A Question of Guilt: A Helen West Mystery

When the rich, middle-aged widow falls in love with her lawyer, she goes to fatal lengths to make him hers. To clear her path to Michael Bernard, she pays a desperate hospital porter five thousand pounds to murder his wife.

In the interview room, Detective Superintendent Geoffrey Bailey extracts a confession from the terrified killer, yet an accomplice’s word cannot convict without independent proof. Cold and calculating, shielded behind her Camden lace business, Eileen denies every link to the contract killing.

Prosecutor Helen West is assigned to the case, but when Eileen’s extraordinary evil reaches out even from behind prison bars, the investigation reaches a climax of frightening and frenzied violence.

Bitter and unyielding, nursing her malice in a remand cell, she targets the very prosecutors preparing her indictment. With cold deliberation, Eileen reaches beyond her cell to strike at Helen West before the trial can begin.

• Psychological Thriller: Eileen Cartwright maintains an eerie composure under interrogation, convinced that washing banknotes in methylated spirits and orchestrating crimes from afar leaves her beyond the law’s reach.
• Police Procedural: Detective Superintendent Geoffrey Bailey sifts through surveillance reports, tracking an amateur assassin who stalked his target carrying a gift-wrapped saw.
• Courtroom Drama: Crown Prosecutor Helen West battles cautious superiors and an accomplice’s fragile nerve to bring an untouchable society widow before an Old Bailey jury.
• Also by This Author: The Playroom, Trial by Fire and Looking Down.