Fruitful Bodies
“ONE THING THE BRITS DO BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE IS THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE NOVEL.… RUTH RENDELL AND MINETTE WALTERS ARE TWO EXAMPLES OF THE BEST PRACTITIONERS OF THIS ART. YOU CAN ADD MORAG JOSS TO THIS LIST.”—
DEADLY PLEASURES
Praise for Morag Joss’s
Spellbinding Mysteries
FRUITFUL BODIES
“The most persuasive chronicler of the city perhaps best known to some as Jane Austen’s stamping ground.”
—London Times
“Joss has a remarkable talent—reminiscent of early P. D. James—and a gift for creating wonderful characters and relationships.”
—Yorkshire Post
“Morag Joss writes with razor-sharp, wry observation.”
—Bath Chronicle
FUNERAL MUSIC
“An exquisite crime novel.… If rich, gorgeous Sara sometimes seems too perfect to be true, the book’s supporting cast is nicely fleshed out with human idiosyncrasies and tangled cross-purposes. Even better are Joss’s lyrical evocations of Bath, which becomes the book’s most compelling character.” —
Publishers Weekly
, starred review
“Funeral Music
earns the favorable Ruth Rendell/P. D. James comparisons Joss has received.… Not many mysteries about professional musicians show how their combination of detail and passion make them ideal detectives, but Joss knows just which strings to pull.” —
Chicago Tribune
“A very dark and disturbing mystery.… Joss has created an excellent ensemble of characters.…
Funeral Music’s
well-plotted story compares to those by Patricia Cornwell, James Patterson and Phillip Margolin.… Each turn of the page skillfully peels away another layer.” —
Fresh Fiction
“It is always a pleasure to welcome a new and exciting talent to British crime writing, and Morag Joss’s distinguished debut demonstrates an interesting setting, characters, both sympathetic and villainous, who are drawn with wit and perception, good writing and a plot which combines tension with credibility.” —P. D. James
“As well plotted as Ruth Rendell and with all the psychological complexity you find in the great P. D. James,
Funeral Music
is an exceptionally accomplished first novel. Beautifully written, it manages to be witty and touching at the same time.… Music lovers will admire Morag Joss’s expertise and anybody who loves Bath itself has to buy this novel for the setting alone.” —Bel Mooney,
Bath Chronicle
“Both literate and sardonic, filled with persuasive characters.” —
Sunday London Times
“The skilful plotting, strong sense of place and colourful but credible characters would alone mark this book out. What makes it not only convincing crime writing but also a fine novel is its lively sense of social comedy and sharp wit.” —
Good Book Guide
“Well written and well plotted, with a good Bath back-ground.”
—Evening Standard
“A promising first novel. The author writes well and has a keen sense of place. Her evocation of Bath is very convincing.”—John Boyles,
Tangled Web
FEARFUL SYMMETRY
“Fearful Symmetry
makes the elegant city of Bath a venue for fear and suspicion. A mesmerising psychological thriller.”
—London Times
“The characters are presented in sharp detail, while their various relationships offer a complex set of variations on the theme of love, all adding a rich substrata to the skilful unravelling of the intricate plot in this accomplished and satisfying novel.”
—Good Book Guide
“Fearful Symmetry
is in the finest tradition of British whodunits—constructed with page-turning skill, witty and touching in equal measure, and displaying the crucial awareness that corruption looks innocent and lives next door.” —Bel Mooney
“A welcome addition to the crime writing genre, there are enough twists and turns to keep you guessing through-out.”
—U Magazine
“Larger-than-life characters inhabit this absorbing mystery.… The plot twists and turns to an unforeseen conclusion.” —
Family Circle
HALF BROKEN THINGS
Winner of the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger Award
“Sad, funny, original and wise.” —
Literary Review
“A work of fiction that sets its author on the path to greatness.” —
London Times
“It is a fantastic moral exercise as well as a gripping novel.” —
Scotland on Sunday
“This is a top-notch example of British psychological thriller writing.” —
Manchester Evening News
Also by Morag Joss
FUNERAL MUSIC
FEARFUL SYMMETRY
And coming soon in
hardcover from Delacorte:
HALF BROKEN THINGS
FRUITFUL BODIES
Hodder and Stoughton UK edition published 2001
Dell mass market / August 2005
Published by Bantam Dell
A division of Random House, Inc. New York,
New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2001 by Morag Joss Cover photos by Hidenori Kataoka/Photonica &
The Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33553-5
v3.1
FOR
FIONA, GAVIN AND NEIL
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
L
ots of people helped. John and Yvonne Cullum very kindly allowed me to turn their beautiful house into a clinic for the purposes of this story. Hamish Denny hunted out huge amounts of arcane information crucial to the plot, despite being busy either sculpting or operating on animals. Fiona Scott-Lockyer found time to show me round the Royal Albert Hall when she had the builders in. The Soil Association was very helpful, as was Howard Morrish of Dove Farm Foods.
The late and much missed Alex Kelly was the source of the (true) story on which
Chapter 10
is based. Iain Burn-side helped with the Rachmaninov as well as with James, and his emails also meant that most days I began work laughing. I must thank also Olive and Bob Heffill, for sharing their knowledge of Japan and the Japanese, and Keith Shearn, former Superintendent of Bath Police, who with his wife Lyn now runs an excellent B&B on which the one in this book is
not
modelled.
I am immensely grateful as ever for the support, advice and patience of Judith Murray at Greene & Heaton and Kate Lyall Grant at Hodder. And Tim and Hannah were, it should go without saying, their saintly, selfless and long-suffering selves throughout the year of writing, for which I do, truly, thank them most of all.
| Brahms | Variations on a Theme by J Haydn—The St Anthony Variations |
| Dvořák | Cello Concerto in B minor Op. 104 |
| Rachmaninov | Preludes Op. 23: No. 4 in D |
| J S Bach | Adagio from the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C, BWV 564 |
| J S Bach | Suites for Violoncello: No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007 |
| Beethoven | Seven Variations in E flat major on Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte |
| | Twelve Variations in F on Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte |
| Saint-Saëns | From Carnival of the animals: The Swan |
| Fauré | Elégie in C minor Op. 24 |
