The Hours Before Dawn
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One of CrimeRead's 10 Best Reissued Mysteries of 2018
In this Edgar Award–winning thriller, a young housewife with two lively daughters and an endlessly crying baby battles domestic chaos as well as growing suspicions of the household's new lodger. Are Louise's fears the product of sleep deprivation, as her unsympathetic husband suggests, or is there really something sinister about the respectable-seeming schoolmistress?
During the hours before dawn, Louise suspects, people with a precarious grip on sanity are likeliest to slip over the edge into madness — especially if there's someone ready to give them a push. Without spilling a drop of blood, this psychological thriller transforms everyday events and settings into the extraordinary, evoking an atmosphere of sheer terror. Crime novelist Andrew Taylor hailed author Celia Fremlin as "Britain's equivalent to Patricia Highsmith … her novels are domestic, subtle, penetrating — and quite horribly chilling."
"Fremlin is a major mistress of insight and suspense." — The New York Times
"It grips like grim death." — The Spectator
"A classic, lost in plain sight. The Hours Before Dawn is a book that should have a permanent spot within the spate of modern domestic suspense and psychological thriller titles that it inspired." — Criminal Element
Celia Fremlin
Celia Fremlin (1914–2009) was born in Kent and spent her childhood in Hertfordshire, before studying at Oxford. During World War II, she served as an air-raid warden before becoming involved with the Mass Observation Project, collaborating on a study of women workers, War Factory. After the loss of her husband and youngest daughter to separate tragedies, Fremlin briefly relocated to Geneva. In 1985, she married Leslie Minchin, with whom she lived until his death in 1999. Over four decades, Fremlin wrote sixteen celebrated novels—including the classic summer holiday mystery Uncle Paul—one book of poetry and three short-story collections. Her debut novel The Hours Before Dawn won the Edgar Award in 1960.
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