A Helping Hand

This is a tale of ruthless greed, exploitation and suffocating, skin-crawling terror. Middle-aged Josh and Maisie Evans lead a seemingly unremarkable life. When their elderly lodger Flo dies and leaves them her Estate, they head to Italy on holiday, to take in the sea air and let the sun soak into their bones. There they meet Mrs Fingal, a wealthy widow who lives unhappily with her grown-up niece. When Josh and Maisie bond with her over ice-cream and daily ambles, it's only natural that they arrange for her to move in with them once home. It suits everyone. For fans of Shirley Jackson, Roald Dahl and Muriel Spark, A Helping Hand is a sharp and nasty slice of darkness, and a reminder that beneath the suburban respectability of cups of tea and genteel chitchat another world lurks, and that the real horrors of this world can all too often be found behind discreet net curtains.

Celia Dale was born in 1912 to parents who were both on the stage. She was once a secretary to Rumer Godden, and also worked as a publisher's advisor and a book reviewer. Her first novel, The Least of These, was published in 1943, and she went on to write twelve others. She won the 1986 Crime Writer's Association Veuve Cliquot Short Story Award for 'Lines of Communication', which appears in her only short story collection, A Personal Call and Other Stories. She died in 2011.