The Bright Day

Description

On the night Neil Moray is returned as Independent MP for the seaside town of Scotney, William Lomax, editor of the local paper, has a visit from a woman with an unsavoury tale to tell about Moray's campaign manager, Rodney Cope. Much has been made of Moray's personal integrity and his determination to clean up Scotney, and it seems plain that the woman, estranged wife of the unsuccessful Conservative candidate, is unbalanced.Nonetheless Lomax takes a hard look at the set-up in Moray's camp. The development of the West Front is a major issue and a suspicion persists that Cope may have a special interest in it . . . Then the woman who started it all is found dead. While sunbathers luxuriate in a heat wave and children queue for donkey rides on the sands, Cope, Moray and Lomax move towards a violent climax, set among police sharpshooters, television cameras and holidaymakers.

Born in in London in 1921, Mary was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Girls School, Acton. During the Second World War she served in the Women's Royal Naval Service (Wrens) attached to the Fleet Air Arm Meteorology branch and then briefly with the Signal Section in Plymouth. Writing was in her blood. Juggling her work as a local government officer in Middlesex Education Department with writing, at first short stories for magazines and pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, she then had her first book, The Winter City, published in 1961. The book was a success and enabled Mary to relinquish her full time occupation to devote her time to writing. Even so, when she came to her beloved Lewes in 1961, she still took a part-time appointment, as a secretary, with the East Sussex Educational Psychology department. Long before family sagas had become cult viewing, she had embarked upon the 'Fairley Family' trilogy - Good Daughters, Indifferent Heroes, and Welcome Strangers - books which give her readers a faithful, realistic and uncompromising portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times, between the years of 1933 and 1946. For many years she was an active member of the 'Monday Lit', a Lewes-based group which brought in current writers and poets to speak about their work. Equally, she was an enthusiastic supporter of Lewes Little Theatre, where she found her role as 'prompter' the most satisfying, and worshipped at the town's St Pancras RC Church.

... shaped and placed with such skill it is bewitching as well as disturbingly credible ... establishes her firmly as one of the most thoughtful contemporary novelists The Times ... an unpretentious writer whose gifts of deft organisation and subtle characterisation are so unobtrusive that it's difficult to recall just what means she has used to nobble one's attention and emotion ... For all its quiet, almost stealthy approach, this book develops surprising emotional power. The Sunday Times ... an assured and experienced novelist ... and she excels at revealing the logic of apparently irrational acts without losing any of the tension of a straightforward thriller Times Literary Supplement