Edgar Award Best Novel Winner
A Dark-Adapted Eye
by Barbara Vine
Summary
Decades after her aunt was hanged for murder, a niece pieces together the buried family secrets that led to the killing of one sister by another. Writing as Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell explores repression, jealousy, and shame in a tightly woven study of an English family. The slow revelation of motive and the dark undercurrents of respectability mark it as a landmark of psychological crime fiction.
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Historical Context & Significance
A Dark-Adapted Eye was the first novel Ruth Rendell published under her Barbara Vine pen name and won the 1987 Edgar Award for Best Novel.