Infidelity by
Paul Ferris
pbk out December 99
(HarperCollins)
at £5.99
Though not published as a crime novel, Infidelity fulfils all the vital criteria. It is a compelling and meticulous anatomy of a real-life domestic murder in World War I. George Shotton, a ship surveyor, escaped a sexless marriage by marrying a sexy former chorus girl. Unfortunately the first Mrs Shotton was still alive and well and living in South Wales. Neither Mrs Shotton knew of the other. But this happy state of affairs could not last for ever. Nor could the conjugal bliss George enjoyed with his second wife, who mysteriously disappeared from the face of the earth.
Shotton was tried for her murder and acquitted – largely because of the absence of a body. (The mortal remains of the second Mrs Shotton turned up in the 1960s, shortly after George’s death, and the subsequent police investigation brackets, rather clumsily, the main story.)
This brisk summary does not do justice to this grim and fascinating novel. Ferris - probably best known as the biographer of Dylan Thomas – creates a thoroughly plausible murderer, a competent professional man, outwardly law-abiding and decent, but sliding deeper and deeper into a morass of contradiction and self-justification. In a sense Shotton’s story demonstrates the dangers of living a double life. As a bonus, Ferris bridges more than eighty years and provides a wonderfully evocative glimpse of life on the home front during World War I.
(
Andrew Taylor
- author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series)
