Hell For Heather

by Pat Flower

A dark tale of marital strife and murder in 1960s Australia! Perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, M.C. Beaton, Lee Strauss and P.C. James.

Peter thinks he’s pulled off the perfect crime … but if Heather’s dead, where is her body?

Sydney, 1962

Peter Baxter can remember a time when he loved his wife, the beautiful, haughty Heather.

But contempt, infidelity and Peter’s vicious cruelty have corroded the marriage, and now they can’t stand to be around one another.

A failure in both business and love, Peter’s set his sights on a future with the childlike Candy. And cashing in Heather’s life insurance would give him just the new start he’s looking for…

But his web of lies quickly begins to unravel when a chance encounter with Detective Inspector Herbert Swinton sets alarm bells ringing for the shrewd detective.

And when the anonymous notes start arriving, Peter’s plunged into a nightmarish world of fear and paranoia. Someone knows what he’s done … but who?

With his plans falling apart around him, can Peter hold on to his sanity … or will his increasingly bizarre behaviour lead to his downfall?

And could an unexpected twist throw even a seasoned detective off the scent?

HELL FOR HEATHER is the fifth gripping mystery in Australian writer Pat Flower’s Inspector Swinton Mystery Series.

‘A fine writer of police procedurals and psychological thrillers’ – Punk Noir Magazine

THE INSPECTOR SWINTON MYSTERY
BOOK 1: Wax Flowers for Gloria
BOOK 2: Goodbye, Sweet William
BOOK 3: A Wreath of Water-Lilies
BOOK 4: One Rose Less
BOOK 5: Hell for Heather

255 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 15, 2022

About the author

Patricia Mary Bryson Flower, crime novelist and television playwright, was one of four children of James Bullen, hotel porter, and his wife Jessie Sarah, née Bryson. Pat left Worthing County High School in 1928 when the family emigrated to Australia. In the 1940s she worked as secretary for the New Theatre League in Sydney, writing radio plays and revue sketches in her spare time. She married Cedric Arthur Flower, a painter, on 4 March 1949. While they were in England from 1950 to 1955, she began to write crime novels, the first of which, Wax Flowers for Gloria, appeared in 1958. She published at least one crime novel every two years until 1975, moving from detective stories such as Goodbye Sweet William (1959)—featuring Inspector Swinton, her Australian 'Maigret' character—to psychological thrillers, among them Cobweb (1972), Slyboots (1974) and Crisscross (1976). Some of her books were translated into French and German.

Back in Sydney, Pat Flower worked as an advertising copywriter until 1963 when she began to write full time. By 1961 she was also writing film and television scripts. Her play The Tape Recorder, a Pinteresque piece for an actress and tape recorder, was televised by the Australian Broadcasting Commission in 1966 and produced in colour by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1967. An adaptation of her novel, Fiends of the Family 1966), for A.B.C. television won an 'Awgie' award in 1969 from the Australian Writers' Guild. In the late1960s some of her television plays were screened in the A.B.C.'s 'Australian Playhouse' series. She also wrote scripts for commercial television. In 1971 the Flowers again visited Europe where Pat gathered further material for her suspense novels. Returning to Sydney in 1972, they took separate flats at Paddington, so that she could concentrate on her writing.

Pat Flower was an amusing companion with a dry wit, but suffered from insomnia and arthritis for many years and was increasingly isolated as her health deteriorated. The two sides of her writing—comedy and horror—reflected aspects of her personality, with her novels becoming progressively darker. On the night of 1/2 September 1977 she died from the effects of poisoning by pentobarbitone, intentionally taken. Her husband survived her.

Scholarly interest in crime writing led to the republication of Vanishing Point (1993) and several critics have championed Flower's later novels as among the best of the genre in Australia.

--condensed from the entry by Susan Lever in the Australian Dictionary of Biography,
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/flowe...