Widely acclaimed as one of England's finest crime novelists at work today, Frances Fyfield has garnered praise for the sophistication of her characterizations, and the intelligence and raw suspense of her narratives. Now, in Perfectly Pure and Good, Fyfield gives us a taut, riveting psychodrama that explores the darkest borders between love and hate.When Sarah Fortune is sent by her London law firm to the small seaside town of Merton, she senses that there is more to sort out than the huge and convoluted Pardoe estate. Guilt, insecurity, unrequited love, and a touch of insanity are only a few of the problems besetting the Pardoes. Sarah comes to know the "barmy, barking, out of her tree" matriarch; the eldest son - a churlish and demonically driven doctor; the middle "child" - a twenty-two-year-old braggart and brute who plays "happy families" with his dolls when he's not playing nasty practical jokes; and the teenage daughter, bright with gilded innocence and dour with hidden, unwanted knowledge.But what Sarah cannot know is that as she moves closer to the heart of the Pardoe family secrets, she is also moving toward a confrontation with the tall, white-haired vagrant who has begun to haunt the townspeople and insinuate himself into the power struggles of the Pardoe children - a malevolent and cunning "ghost" out of Sarah's own past. Read Less