response

This book focuses on the social exclusion and marginalization of respectable women in the context of their response to risk. Of the four stories included in the collection, three deal with crime, deviance, or both.

Avery Denys, the novels heroine, lost her husband and her blind daughter. But in response to these tragic events, Avery simply reflects that she was „left with nothing to do”, and finds a job that allows her to act out the mother role she now misses. A rock to her female friends, Avery is rational yet caring, but also submissive in the face of her eventual second husband’s violence towards her and...

The young handsome Mayor of Mechester, Daniel Poynton is the owner of a very successful shoe manufacturer, the major employer in the city and the mayor will soon be a Lord Mayor. Never before interested in women, or even in social affairs, he is stricken by the beauty of The Lady Ursula Manningham and falls in love. As the novel develops, Poynton’s factory is threatened by foreign manufacturers who...

Marshall Allerdyke is driving through the night from London to Hull in response to an urgent telegram from his cousin. As he nears Hull, a beautiful woman stops his car to ask for directions to Scotland. Odd time to be traveling so far and in such a hurry, but Allerdyke’s mind is elsewhere. When he finally arrives in Hull, he finds his cousin dead in his hotel room and a valuable consignment of jewels...