CRIMES & PUNISHMENTS: A novella and two short stories

by Sarah Rayne

A novella and two short stories from the pen of Sarah Rayne, who has been referred to as the 'Dark Lady of Crime Fiction'. In 'The Unknown Crime and The Forgotten Manuscript', she creates a modern-day Raffles/Lovejoy. As the youngest of a family of gentlemanly burglars, forgers and art fraudsters, he has long since yearned to commit a crime so dazzling it will create international headlines and echo down the years. When he discovers his great-grandfather carried out an audacious theft a hundred years earlier, he believes his ambition could be within his grasp. 'The Forgotten Manuscript' holds out the same promise, after he makes a remarkable find in the library of an Elizabethan manor house. In 'A Clever Evil' a journalist reporting from a war-torn city, is lured into a macabre trap. 'A Strange Retribution' recounts how a writer discovers an unexpected document that contains a startling confession.

Genres: Mystery

78 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 18, 2020

About the author

Aka Frances Gordon, Bridget Wood

After a convent education, which included writing plays for the Lower Third to perform, Sarah Rayne embarked on a variety of jobs, but - probably inevitably - returned again and again to writing. Her first novel appeared in 1982, and since then her books have also been published in America, Holland and Germany.

The daughter of an Irish comedy actor, she was for many years active in amateur theatre, and lists among her hobbies, theatre, history, music, and old houses - much of her inspiration comes from old buildings and their histories and atmospheres. To these interests, she adds ghosts and ghost stories, and - having grown up in the Sixties - good conversation around a well-stocked dinner table.