The Good Doctor About the Author Bibliography
Carola Groom
The Good Doctor
About the Author
Bibliography
The Good Doctor
An attempted shooting and a successful poisoning - but is it murder or suicide? The
dead man is the provincial town's popular and gifted doctor. The prime suspect is his
devoted young wife.
Five years earlier, a naive young girl was involved in another murder - this time, as a
key witness for the defence. Her actions that day were destined to haunt her for the rest
of her life.
The Good Doctor is an intriguing tale of death and suspense in Victorian
England, as a young woman struggles against a society where independence is unacceptable,
and passion unacknowledged.
An intriguing and, sexually-charged detective story, set in Victorian England, The
Good Doctor combines the conventional elements of detective fiction - including a
period piece murder trial and an intelligent but biased detective - with unlaboured
examination of emerging social concerns - the rights of women, sexual freedom, health
reforms and industrialisation, charged throughout with powerful sexual tension.
`A potpourri of Victorian melodrama. After a shooting and fatal poisoning come a
fratricide trial, a wife's frantic flight and a child's post-mortem . . . The novel's
appeal, though , lies not just in its suspense but in its cohesive presentation of diverse
elements and states of mind. Convincingly of their period, the characters and their moral
minefield are tinglingly in touch with our own' Scotland On Sunday
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carola Groom was born in Kirkby in 1957. She studied Law at Oxford, then Social
Policy and Social Work at the London School of Economics, and has worked as a probationer
and an administrator. She now lives in Edinburgh with her journalist husband and their
two, children.
'When I began writing The Good Doctor I wanted to tell a story, a good
old-fashioned one steeped in mystery and romance. Then Katherine, the main character and
narrator, took on a life of her own. Her sex, her social position, even the language
available to her imposed restrictions, pushing her on a spiral to disaster... I have
worked in criminal courts and I am interested in the subtle shades of guilt and innocence,
the difficulty of getting at "the truth"' Carola Groom
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