Jumping The Queue

Description

Her celebrated first novel! Matilda Poliport, recently widowed, has decided to End It All. But her meticulously planned bid for graceful oblivion is foiled, and when later she foils the suicide attempt of another lost soul - Hugh Warner, on the run from the police - life begins again for both.;But life also begins to throw up nasty secrets and awkward questions- just what was Matilda's husband Tom doing in Paris? How is the soon-to-be-knighted John (or Piers as he likes to be called) involved? Was Louise more than just a lovely daughter? And why did Hugh choose Matilda as his saviour?

Mary Wesley was born near Windsor in 1912. Her education took her to the London School of Economics and during the War she worked in the War Office. Although she initially fulfilled her parent's expectations in marrying an aristocrat she then scandalised them when she divorced him in 1945 and moved in with the great love of her life, Eric Siepmann. The couple married in 1952, once his wife had finally been persuaded to divorce him. She used to comment that her 'chief claim to fame is arrested development, getting my first novel [Jumping the Queue] published at the age of seventy'. She went on to write a further nine novels, three of which were adapted for television, including the best-selling The Camomile Lawn. Mary Wesley was awarded the CBE in the 1995 New Year's honour list and died in 2002.

I loved it for its extraordinary combination of despair and wild black humour -- Julia Blackburn Great verve and inventiveness * Times Literary Supplement * A virtuoso performance of guileful plotting, deft characterisation and malicious wit * The Times * Quriky, sexy and deeply fascinating -- Sheila Hancock