The series starred Jeremy Northam and Douglas Hodge. The BBC adapted the novel for Radio 4 in 1991, and in three episodes for television in 1992 as the first novel to be adapted for The Barbara Vine Mysteries.

But which woman is dead? And whose child? Slowly the facts emerge and the past catches up with them. The horrific discovery challenges the buried memories and guilt of a small group of young people who, 10 years earlier, spent the broiling Summer of 1976 in a self-indulgently irresponsible idyll at Wyvis Hall, unexpectedly inherited by one of their number. In the process of burying a beloved dog in the animal cemetery of Wyvis Hall, a beautiful Suffolk country house, the owner unearths the skeletons of a dead woman and baby. The novel won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger in that year and, in 1987, was also shortlisted for the Dagger of Daggers, a special award to select the best Gold Dagger winner of the award's 50-year history. Her other books include: A Dark Adapted Eye The House of Stairs Gallowglass Asta's Book No Night Is Too Long In the Time of His Prosperity The Brimstone Wedding The Chimney Sweeper's Boy Grasshopper The Blood Doctor The Minotaur The Birthday Present and The Child's Child.A Fatal Inversion is a 1987 novel by Ruth Rendell, written under the pseudonym Barbara Vine.

She has written fifteen novels using this pseudonym, including A Fatal Inversion and King Solomon's Carpet which both won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. Barbara Vine is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell. James, Ian Rankin and Scott Turow, you will love this book. A most satisfying end' Daily Telegraph 'Nimbly written with all the Dickensian values of vivid characterization, fine prose style and a cunningly devised plot that shifts and twists and keeps you on the edge of your chair' Val Hennessy, Daily Mail A Fatal Inversion is a modern classic of the crime genre. the clues are cunningly planted, so that it seems one should have known all along. Which woman? Whose child? 'I defy anyone to guess the conclusion. Ten years later, the bodies of a woman and child are discovered in the Hall's animal cemetery. Adam, Rufus, Shiva, Vivien and Zosie hardly ask why they are there or how they are to live they scavenge, steal and sell the family heirlooms.

that compels a reader to go on turning the pages' Sunday Times In the long hot summer of 1976, a group of young people are camping in Wyvis Hall. Vine has the kind of near-Victorian narrative drive. Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell) A Fatal Inversion Reviewed by Rick Kleffel After Ruth Rendell turned the mystery world upside-down when she penned A Dark Adapted Eye under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, nothing was ever the same.

a gripping read from start to end' Daily Mail 'Brilliant. A Fatal Inversion - a classic thriller from the queen of crime Barbara Vine 'An absolute winner.

A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine