Schijn bedriegt

by Celia Dale

Grace en Janice ontmoeten elkaar in Holloway Prison. Nadat beide vrouwen zijn vrijgekomen, wordt Janice al snel medeplichtig aan een plan dat Grace heeft bedacht: ze doen zich voor als medewerkers van de dienst maatschappelijk werk en praten zich met een smoesje bij ouderen naar binnen. Eenmaal in huis drogeren ze hun slachtoffer, om er vervolgens vandoor te gaan met alle waardevolle spullen die ze kunnen vinden.

Het plan blijkt goed te werken en de vrouwen slaan slag na slag. Totdat een van de berovingen uit de hand loopt…

Schijn bedriegt is een sinister verhaal over hebzucht en misplaatst vertrouwen.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Classics, Crime, Thriller, Literary Fiction, Novels

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 22, 1988

About the author

Not very much is known about the author Celia Dale except for a few scant details. Celia Dale was born in 1912 and she was daughter of the actor, James Dale and was married to the journalist and critic, Guy Ramsey until his death in 1959. She worked in Fleet Street and as a publishers adviser and book reviewer. Some of her books were dramatised on radio and TV. Dales first book appeared in 1943 but it was her later novels where she branched out in to the realms of psychological crime. In all, Dale produced thirteen novels and a collection of short stories.

Celia Dale took everyday domestic situations and gave them a bitter twist. In Helping with Enquiries there are only three main protagonists, their story revolving around the murder of the mother. In A Helping Hand the vulnerability of the elderly is masterfully portrayed. Dale won the 1986 Crime Writers Association Veuve Cliquot Short Story Award for Lines of Communication which appears in her short story collection, A Personal Call and other stories which show that Dale had the short story down to a fine art. Her final book in 1988 was Sheeps Clothing.

Celia Dale died on the 31st December 2011, just short of her hundredth birthday. - Excerpted from FantasticFiction

Novels
The Least of These (1944)
To Hold the Mirror (1946)
The Dry Land (1952)
The Wooden O (1953)
Trial of Strength (1955)
A Spring of Love (1960)
Other People (1964)
A Helping Hand (1966)
Act of Love (1969)
A Dark Corner (1971)
The Innocent Party (1973)
Helping with Enquiries (1979)
aka The Deception
Sheep's Clothing (1988)

Reviews

[Omolara Anisere · Rating 3 out of 5]

Couldn’t put this one down. But the ending? Shambolic!! I like that the narrative centres women and ordinary Londoners. But I hate the loose ties at the end. I need more. I NEED MORE CELIA, RISE FROM THE DEAD AND ANSWER MY QUESTIONS.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really love Celia Dale. She's a bit of a Patricia Highsmith-Muriel Spark hybrid. This one had a bit of a lackluster ending, but I forgive her.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another title I discovered from the Summer Reading Special Backlisted podcast. What a blast this was to read--I couldn't turn the pages quickly enough--and what a uniquely gifted author Celia Dale was. Apparently she at one time served as a secretary for Rumer Godden, another author I admire. Whatever Dale's employee responsibilities might have been, they didn't suppress her eventual exploration of psychological thrillers. OK, I did predict one of the outcomes, but that was all. And the ending satisfied. If there existed a separate category for psychological thrillers, I would award this five stars. Having read it soon after Middlemarch, however, I just can't justify awarding the same rating. Sheep's Clothing is, however, very good--a quick read and wholly satisfying.
From what I've read online, Sheep's Clothing is her last published work, so perhaps I've read the best of her output. Daunt Books has reissued Sheep's Clothing and A Helping Hand, which was first published in 1966. I own that title and am looking forward to reading it.

[Wendy Greenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Celia Dale's writing style. Redolent of 1950s yet written in the 1980s. Very gentle yet compelling crime (if there is such a genre). Women preying on women. Two women pose as social workers, targetting the old and (ideally) confused out of their treasures.

Carefully formed and substantive characters make this one of those novels that is both plot and character driven, hitting all the right notes for credibility. The intelligent vulpine cunning of the criminal mind is crafted so well that the deceit for personal gain seems almost pedestrian. It is the observations of minute details that pepper the reading that just urged me on.

[J.J. Garza · Rating 3 out of 5]

¡Ah, qué manera de tirar la bola con el final!

Supe de esta novela por el maravilloso newsletter del NYT que recomienda lecturas de libros ya descatalogados pero que valen la pena. En este caso el libro en cuestión etá rescatado por Daunt Books, la editorial fundada por el CEO de Barnes & Noble y Waterstones.

Se trata de una novela negra ambientada en el Londres de los 80 pero por cómo está escrita parece representar algo de treinta años antes. Crimen sórdido y moralmente indigente en esa Inglaterra venida a menos de resabios de las épocas victorianas y eduardianas. Ese país de añejos papeles tapiz en las paredes, bric-a-bracs (o sea chácharas) de porcelana, balnearios decrépitos como Brighton y Blackpool y casas que huelen a hollín y orines.

Altamente psicológica, como homenajeando a Muriel Spark. Pasamos mucho tiempo dentro de las cabezas de los personajes y hay partes donde se vuelve farragosa. Pero vale la pena quizá sólo por el retrato de la época y la minuciosidad de los personajes. Final muy deceptionante y anodino.

[Silvie Klokgieter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grace en Janice ontmoeten elkaar in de Holloway-gevangenis. Zodra beide vrouwen vrijkomen, wordt Janice al snel medeplichtig aan een plan dat Grace heeft bedacht: ze doen zich voor als vertegenwoordigers van de Sociale Dienst en praten zich met een smoesje bij ouderen naar binnen.

Als ze eenmaal in huis zijn drogeren ze hun slachtoffer, om er vervolgens vandoor te gaan met alle waardevolle spullen die ze kunnen vinden.

Het plan blijkt goed te werken en de vrouwen slaan slag na slag. Totdat een van de berovingen uit de hand loopt…

De laatste tijd lees ik ontzettend veel fijne, goede verhalen maar nu zit er helaas weer een titel tussen waar ik een klein beetje minder enthousiast over ben.

'Schijn bedriegt' gaat over de levens van Grace en Janice. Ze hebben elkaar in de gevangenis ontmoet en na hun vrijlating gaan ze aan iets slechts beginnen. Grace heeft namelijk een plannetje bedacht om mensen op te lichten.

Je leest dan ook al snel dat ze bij hun eerste slachtoffer in huis zijn en zich voordoen als mensen van de Sociale Dienst. Zo gauw ze hun slachtoffer hebben weten te overtuigen slaan ze toe en nemen ze allerlei waardevolle spelen mee.

Dit vond ik allemaal nog wel aardig beginnen en ook krijg je meer informatie over deze twee personages te weten, waaronder het liefdesleven van Janice.

Maar... daarna vind ik het een beetje eentonig en traag. Er gebeuren niet heel veel spannende dingen en de flaptekst maakt eigenlijk alles al een beetje duidelijk over hoe het verhaal zal verlopen.

Er is echter niets mis met de schrijfstijl van deze auteur en zoals ik eerder al aangaf, is het begin zeker prima. Het maakte uiteindelijk alleen niet helemaal mijn verwachtingen waar.

Nog even een weetje: dit verhaal is al ruim dertig jaar oud en uitgebracht in 1988, maar nu in een nieuw jasje gestoken.

Beoordeling: 3,0 ⭐️

[kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

you rarely come across books this effortlessly grey, heartbreaking but utterly bland—deeply horrid and still so normal and unnoticeable
yet i’m more heartbroken for (most) characters than i have been with many other books

Dale deserves to be remembered

[Fiona MacDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chillingly sinister and yet disturbingly ordinary.

[Stephen Goldenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yet another largely forgotten author I’ve discovered through the excellent books podcast’Backlisted’ (giving new life to old books). This novel is a bit of an oddity. It’s just about categorisable as crime fiction and it makes for a depressing read. Two women, one older and one younger, meet in prison and, on coming out, operate a scheme for stealing from elderly women by gaining entry to their homes pretending to be from social services. They then drug their tea and make off with whatever paltry items they can sell. Their lives are grim until the younger one starts a relationship with a mysterious man.
There are no particularly likeable or empathetic characters, but I still found the novel interesting and readable.

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

I, for one, detest elder abuse.

[z.]

chapter four (76 pages btw) put me in such a slump i stopped reading idgaf about their love lifes im here to read about how they scam old people

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Mrs Black encouraged Mrs Davies to talk about her life. She knew from many years' experience that if old people had not withdrawn into a carapace of silence, as some did, then their prime need was to talk, to reach back into the past when everyone was alive and kicking, and relive in speech the days when their bodies were vigorous, fulfilling all demands, and had not become merely a creaking case housing a still active memory."

Eerily sinister and entirely chilling, Sheep's Clothing is sort of an enigma of a novel. Equal parts crime noir meets mystery novel, meets examination of the rapacious void that is humanity, this is a startlingly ordinary novel. It's drab and dreary, and the characters are so unapologetically regular. Sheep's Clothing is a bleak, really rather depressing read. It all feels so grey, even the happier scenes within the novel are told with a melancholic edge. It's so difficult to explain but this novel is so gritty, grimy, utterly filthy, like being stuck on an endless loop on the tube, confined to a carriage that's caked with discarded cigarette ends and smothered in the scent of stale smoke. Nothing about this book, at any point, felt any good to experience, yet, it was such a wonderful read.

For lack of a better way to describe it, Sheep's Clothing feels like an incredibly lonely novel. It's clear that Celia Dale excels in writing detestable, dislikable, bloody horrible characters that have next to no redeeming qualities about them. This is what, ultimately, makes the narrative so compelling, you so badly want these two to face justice, but, you do not wish for the story to be over. Clearly, a marvelously gifted author. Sheep's Clothing is a rather satisfying read. At the end of the day, it's a crime noir masquerading as a psychological thriller, the prose is pretty sparse and to the point, which only seems to elevate the miserable, joyless atmosphere that envelops the entire thing. There's something so uncomfortable about this novel, like a splinter lodged under your skin.

"The vision of that little old lady, sitting dead in her chair while the world went on outside, upset Simpson. Death had begun to upset him lately, the insult of it - violent death that was. And violent death was what had come to eighty-five-year-old Sibyl Emily Firmwell, no matter how peacefully she'd sat in her chair. Someone had fed her those pills and taken her treasures. And Simpson would get them. Maybe."

Perhaps the almost unbearable feeling that this novel imparts within us is due to how sickeningly typical it all seems. Haunting, and entirely unpleasant, Sheep's Clothing does what I think, is a good job of examining just why someone might prey upon the vulnerable; it so excellently depicts greed and lust and how that can fuel almost anyone. It's a brilliant novel, one with a rather vague ending to say the least, nothing really gets answered or wrapped up, so you kind of have to be okay with not knowing the outcome in the end. It could be argued that this "out" is lacking in some ways, however, I quite like an open ending, and I'm super grateful that this novel didn't have an epilogue.

"When Grace was fourteen Mum's parents came to live with them. Grandma had had a stroke, Grandad could not cope. The front parlour was made into their bedroom and was soon suffused with their particular odour of winter-green, tobacco and unwashed flesh. Grandma had another stroke and died of it; Grandad remained. He was a disgusting old man and had been a disgusting young one, cunning, a bully, envious of all who had done better than he is."

[Hannie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Het eerste deel van het boek vond ik wat saai. Het was veel van hetzelfde, Janice en Grace die oude dametjes overvallen. Deel 2 en 3 waren interessanter, omdat er wat meer in gebeurde. Gelukkig, want anders was het lezen van dit boek een beproeving geworden. Het einde was ook leuk, ondanks dat het niet heel verrassend was. Al met al was het dan toch nog wel een leuk boek.

[rachael gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible, haunting, dastardly. Woah!

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pleasant read perfect for the holidays but still too similar to “A Helping Hand”.

[Céloche]

Just a gloomy little story about lonely old people, greed, petty crime and the depressing banality of the British middle class. Good and super easy read, full of suspense, will defo read more Celia Dale in the future.

[Lizzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kind of liked this - two women posing as the social services in 1970/80s(?) London go about scamming pensioners. Pretty dark & twisted!

[Margaret Mechinus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish there were more Celia Dale books to read. They are brilliantly written, compelling stories.

[Sonia VM · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 ⭐
Fijn boek, leest heel vlot, ik kon niet wachten om het einde te kennen.
Benieuwd naar andere boeken van deze auteur.

[nooran · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[megan ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rip Janice you would’ve loved ribbed music for the numb generation by the sohodolls

[Miranda Round · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy to read but easy to forget. Good, likeable and interesting characters to root for, the plot initially drew me in but didn't really go far enough to make you feel much.

[Renée · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’d never heard of Celia Dale before reading this book. Only afterwards I discovered that she’s a badass psychological crime writer. In her 70s she wrote het last novel, Sheep’s Clothing. It’s a chilling and suspenseful tale of two female con artists who prey on vulnerable elderly women.

Dale's writing is precise, but she creates a palpable sense of menace and unease throughout the novel. The two con artists are both fascinating and repulsive, and Dale does a masterful job of exploring their complex motivations and psychology.

The plot of Sheep's Clothing is relatively straightforward, but Dale keeps the reader guessing until the very end. Dale was clearly aware of the vulnerabilities of ageing, yet writes with a light touch and a sly humour in the book’s final twist.

Be prepared for some vivid characterisation, attention to detail and clean, unadorned prose.

[Sara Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved this, did not want to put it down. i was kinda hoping for a different ending, like Grace being super unhinged but, still so good.

[Sally turnbull · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. It’s different from most books I read , which made a good change. I liked the range of characters and the insights into their perspectives and felt the ending worked well.

[meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

“standing up against the wall with her hands and her hair hanging down, a thin pale woman of nearly thirty from whom the transient bloom of the last few weeks had been drenched away in an instant”

[Molly · Rating 2 out of 5]

unfortunately, this book is guilty of the most cardinal of sins: it's boring. the main characters are so dislikable, but lacking in any charisma, and the twist is so untwisty that there is no satisfaction from the novel at all.

[JacquiWine · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is something particularly chilling about a crime novel featuring an ordinary domestic setting – the type of story where sinister activities take place behind the veil of net curtains in the privacy of the victim’s home. The English writer Celia Dale excelled in this area, certainly based on the scenarios she created in A Helping Hand (1966) and her last novel, Sheep’s Clothing, first published in 1988.

The two books have several factors in common. Both show how vulnerable individuals – particularly the elderly and trusting – can be preyed upon by malicious confidence tricksters; both are icily compelling tales of greed and deception, stealthily executed amidst carefully orchestrated conversations and kindly cups of tea; and both have been reissued by the publishing arm of Daunt Books, one of the most reliable publishers on the block. (I’ve yet to encounter a disappointment from them.) And just as A Helping Hand made my 2022 reading highlights, Sheep’s Clothing seems set to repeat that feat in 2023; it really is a superb book.

The central protagonist is Grace, a merciless, well-organised con woman in her early sixties with a track record of larceny. As a trained nurse with experience of care homes, Grace is well versed in the habits and behaviours of the elderly – qualities that have enabled her to develop a seemingly watertight plan for fleecing some of society’s most vulnerable individuals, typically frail old women living on their own.

To enact her plan, Grace has teamed up with Janice, a passive, malleable young woman she met in Holloway prison. With no family or friends of her own, Janice is like putty in Grace’s hands; she simply does what Grace tells her to do in return for a cut of the loot. (The two women also share a bedsit, cementing Janice’s dependency on Grace for all financial support.)

The novel opens with the two women working over one of their victims, knocking on an old lady’s door while posing as Social Services representatives, complete with fake ID. After gaining the victim’s interest with the mention of good news, they enter the home to discuss everything privately. As Grace charms her target, launching into a well-rehearsed spiel about additional benefits and the promise of a windfall payment, Janice is dispatched to the kitchen to make tea, which she spikes with ground-up sleeping pills to knock the victim out. Once the old woman is asleep, Grace and Janice load up their bags with items of interest – typically radios, jewellery, good clothes and any cash – then depart, leaving no trace of their presence. It’s a cruel, ruthless scam, implemented with great efficiency by the calculating Grace – the wolf in sheep’s clothing of the novel’s fitting title.

To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2023...

[CarolineFromConcord · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found Celia Dale's 1988 novel about a pair of female con artists in England worthwhile, but I was expecting it to be a murder mystery. True, someone dies as a result of one of the cons, but officialdom doesn't appear to notice the suspicious death or produce an investigator until halfway through the book, and anyway the tale is not really about an investigation. It's more of a character study.

Dale goes into the backstories of three people: the hardened middle-aged plotter (Grace), the hapless sidekick she met in prison (Janice), and the beau that Janice picks up in a pub (a kindly cypher called Dave). We watch the women steal from solitary old ladies that Grace has carefully screened, and we watch as Grace moves on to a bigger scam by herself, leaving Janice to flounder and to fall hard for Dave.

The main focus is on how these characters and a range of old ladies see the world. There was a lot of wisdom about the psychological effects of declining faculties and also about 20-something Janice's belated awakening to life. There's a subtext about how we all blind ourselves to things we're not ready to see.

Ultimately, the only character I connected with was Dave. I liked the book OK, but I really wanted to read a murder mystery.

[Alex Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another twisted tale from Celia Dale and one that I can’t help but think could’ve only come from someone writing in their later years. This feels like Dale reflecting on fears of the elderly, she herself was in her 70s when she wrote this, and it’s an effective one.

Grace and Janice run a scam, posing as pension workers, to trick their way into the homes of the elderly. Once in, they drug them and rob them of their valuables and make a clean exit. This leaves their victims vulnerable and unable to report the crimes due to being shrugged off as doddery and feeble. Perfect crime, right? Nope. When one of their victims dies from an overdose, the police begin to investigate the mysterious cause of death.

As with A Helping Hand, I loved the characters and thought the narrative was a lot of fun. The pacing was great until the third part, where it felt certain elements had been skimmed over in an effort to wrap it all up… it needed more time to fill in gaps, but this was just where the POV shifts throughout the book - some perspectives felt neglected at times.

I truly hope that Daunt Books decide to publish more of her work. If not, I’ll be scouring the internet for acceptable copies of whatever I can find.