The Worsted Viper (Mrs. Bradley)
By Gladys Mitchell
Mrs. Bradley is not unaccustomed to receiving fan mail, but the anonymous letter that she opens one morning at breakfast has not been sent by a well-wisher. The letter evokes memories for Mrs. Bradley of a past criminal investigation, in which she had played a minor role in convicting a particularly unpleasant murderer and Satanist.
The letter, too, provides a link to a sudden spate of gruesome and ritualistic murders occurring in the normally tranquil surroundings of the Norfolk Broads and not for the first time, Mrs. Bradley finds herself drawn into a race to track down a killer.
Aided by her nephew Jonathan, and only occasionally hampered by her three former pupils—Laura, Kitty and Alice—Mrs. Bradley takes to the myriad waterways where she is pitted against a dark occultist sect, a deadly line in knitwear and a plot to dismantle an ancient monument, and where she finds herself the object of a long-harboured plan for revenge.
Mrs. Bradley is not unaccustomed to receiving fan mail, but the anonymous letter that she opens one morning at breakfast has not been sent by a well-wisher. The letter evokes memories for Mrs. Bradley of a past criminal investigation, in which she had played a minor role in convicting a particularly unpleasant murderer and Satanist.
The letter, too, provides a link to a sudden spate of gruesome and ritualistic murders occurring in the normally tranquil surroundings of the Norfolk Broads and not for the first time, Mrs. Bradley finds herself drawn into a race to track down a killer.
Aided by her nephew Jonathan, and only occasionally hampered by her three former pupils—Laura, Kitty and Alice—Mrs. Bradley takes to the myriad waterways where she is pitted against a dark occultist sect, a deadly line in knitwear and a plot to dismantle an ancient monument, and where she finds herself the object of a long-harboured plan for revenge.