Ditched by her married lover Hugh on the day she was made redundant, Leonie plans to make life difficult for Hugh while she searches for a new job. She inveigles her way into his house as a cleaner, intending to plant fake clues to his new liaison for his wife Amanda to find. But instead she discovers real clues to Amanda’s secrets.
Meanwhile, fellow cleaners Brenda and Tina also have hidden agendas as they work: Brenda is counting on a spot of blackmail and Tina is looking for financial information to sell to her dodgy brother-in-law.
At the centre of this web is Amanda’s gardener Simon: handsome, ruthless and plausible, with a shady past and lofty ambitions.
A death in an apparent accident arouses Leonie’s suspicions. Can she put aside her animosity towards Amanda and use her impressive – if sometimes unorthodox – investigative skills to find the truth before someone else dies?
The Grass Widow
Vanessa Edwards
Vanessa is a lawyer and translator turned writer. Her debut novel The Grass Widow (under its original title Some Like It Cold) was long listed for the Bath Novel Award and short listed for the Impress Prize for New Writers and the Retreat West Novel Prize.