Minette Walters: The Scold's Bridle (UK 2012)

From the Publisher:
I wonder if I should keep these diaries under lock and key. Jenny Spede has disturbed them again... What does she make, I wonder, of an old woman, deformed by arthritis, stripping naked for a young man? The pills worry me more. Ten is such a round number to be missing...

Mathilda Gillespie's body was found nearly two days after she had taken an overdose and slashed her wrists with a Stanley knife. But what shocked Dr Sarah Blakeney the most was the scold's bridle obscuring the dead woman's face, a metal contraption grotesquely adorned with a garland of nettles and Michaelmas daisies. What happened at Cedar House in the tortured hours before Mathilda's death?

The police assume that the coroner will return a verdict of suicide. Only Dr Blakeney, it seems, doubts the verdict. Until it is discovered that Mathilda's diaries have disappeared...

Minette Walters: The Scold's Bridle. Pan, ISBN: 9781447208099 (March, 2012), 480 p., £7.99.

Minette Walters: The Scold's Bridle (UK 2011)

From the Publisher:
I wonder if I should keep these diaries under lock and key. Jenny Spede has disturbed them again... What does she make, I wonder, of an old woman, deformed by arthritis, stripping naked for a young man? The pills worry me more. Ten is such a round number to be missing...

Mathilda Gillespie's body was found nearly two days after she had taken an overdose and slashed her wrists with a Stanley knife. But what shocked Dr Sarah Blakeney the most was the scold's bridle obscuring the dead woman's face, a metal contraption grotesquely adorned with a garland of nettles and Michaelmas daisies. What happened at Cedar House in the tortured hours before Mathilda's death?

The police assume that the coroner will return a verdict of suicide. Only Dr Blakeney, it seems, doubts the verdict. Until it is discovered that Mathilda's diaries have disappeared...

Minette Walters: The Scold's Bridle. Pan eBook, ISBN: 9780330528740 (March, 2011), 974 KB (ca. 468 p.), £5.99.

Minette Walters: The Scold's Bridle (UK 2008)

From the Publisher:
I wonder if I should keep these diaries under lock and key. Jenny Spede has disturbed them again... What does she make, I wonder, of an old woman, deformed by arthritis, stripping naked for a young man? The pills worry me more. Ten is such a round number to be missing...

Mathilda Gillespie's body was found nearly two days after she had taken an overdose and slashed her wrists with a Stanley knife. But what shocked Dr Sarah Blakeney the most was the scold's bridle obscuring the dead woman's face, a metal contraption grotesquely adorned with a garland of nettles and Michaelmas daisies. What happened at Cedar House in the tortured hours before Mathilda's death?

The police assume that the coroner will return a verdict of suicide. Only Dr Blakeney, it seems, doubts the verdict. Until it is discovered that Mathilda's diaries have disappeared...

Minette Walters: The Scold's Bridle. Pan, ISBN: 0330336630 (August, 2008), 480 p., £6.99.

Minette Walters: The Scold's Bridle (USA 2007)

From the Publisher:
Dr. Sarah Blakeney is one of very few mourners when her grumpy old patient, Mathilda Gillespie, dies at home in the bathtub, apparently of suicide. The old woman has taken barbiturates, slit her wrists, and bound her head in a rusted contraption called a scold's bridle, a cage with tongue clamps used to torture women in the Middle Ages. The police start to suspect homicide right around the time they learn that Sarah has been generously included in the dead woman's will. When she becomes the prime suspect in the murder, it's up to Sarah to delve into the bizarre details of Mathilda's private life, a history of greed, abuse, and depravity, and uncover the real killer.

Minette Walters: The Scold's Bridle. Picador USA, ISBN: 0312427557 (October, 2007), 368 p., $14.00.

Minette Walters: The Scold's Bridle (USA 1995)

From the Publisher:
Few tears fall when rich, spiteful old Mathilda Gillespie's bloody corpse is found her bathtub, her wrists slit and the ancient scold's bridle clamped on her head. It seems Mathilda's favorite heirloom was also an instrument of torture form the Middle Ages, an iron cage used to gag yapping women. Among the Dorset villagers, only Sarah Blakeney, Mathilda's doctor for her final year, seems even mildly disturbed that the miserable nag has been muzzled forever.

But suicide starts to look like homicide, and Sarah's sorrow seems a bit contrived when the bombshell drops that Mathilda has disinherited her daughter and granddaughter, leaving her entire fortune to Sarah. Now the object of vicious gossip and the police's prime suspect in a brutal murder, Sarah must prove her innocence by delving into Mathilda's past to unmask the real killer.

Minette Walters: The Scold's Bridle. St. Martin's Paperbacks, ISBN: 0312956126 (October, 1995), 364 p., $7.99.

Minette Walters: The Scold's Bridle (UK 1995)

From the Publisher:
I wonder if I should keep these diaries under lock and key. Jenny Spede has disturbed them again...What does she make, I wonder, of an old woman, deformed by arthritis, stripping naked for a young man? The pills worry me more. Ten is such a round number to be missing...

Mathilda Gillespie's body was found nearly two days after she had taken an overdose and slashed her wrists with a Stanley knife. But what shocked Dr Sarah Blakeney the most was the scold's bridle obscuring the dead woman's face, a metal contraption grotesquely adorned with a garland of nettles and Michaelmas daisies.What happened at Cedar House in the tortured hours before Mathilda's death? The police assume that the coroner will return a verdict of suicide. Only Dr Blakeney, it seems, doubts the verdict. Until it is discovered that Mathilda's diaries have disappeared...

"An atmosphere of tantalizing, overpowering menace... The tradition of the English whodunnit has passed into the safe hands and dangerous imagination of Minette Walters" - The Times.

Minette Walters: The Scold's Bridle. Pan, ISBN: 0330336630 (May, 1995), 464 p., £4.99.

Minette Walters: The Scold's Bridle (USA 1994)

From the Publisher:
Mathilda Gillespie's body was found nearly two days after she had taken an overdose and slashed her wrists with a utility knife. But what shocked Dr. Sarah Blakeney the most was the rusted metal cage obscuring the dead woman's face - a medieval instrument of torture called a scold's bridle grotesquely adorned with a garland of nettles and Michaelmas daises. What happened at Cedar House in the tortured hours before Mathilda's death?

Detective Sergeant Cooper, an elderly policeman nearing retirement, is under pressure from his superiors to bring in a verdict of suicide. And even Mathilda's daughter and granddaughter insist that illness drove her to commit the desperate, final act. Only Sarah and her husband, Jack, refuse to believe that the Mathilda they knew would have taken her own life. Then comes the reading of Mathilda's Last Will and Testament, which shocks her family into a stunned and bitter silence. For Dr. Sarah Blakeney has inherited everything.

Minette Walters: The Scold's Bridle. St. Martin's Press, ISBN: 0312113773 (October, 1994), 327 p., $21.95.

Minette Walters: The Scold's Bridle (UK 1994)

From the Publisher:
Mathilda Gillespie's body was found nearly two days after she had taken an overdose and slashed her wrists with a Stanley knife. But what shocked Dr Sarah Blakeney the most was the rusted metal cage obscuring the dead woman's face - a scold's bridle grotesquely adorned with a garland of nettles and Michaelmas daisies. What happened at Cedar House in the tortured hours before Mathilda's death? Was it suicide or murder? Only Mathilda's diaries can give the full picture explaining the life she led before her death. Mathilda's diaries have disapeared.

Minette Walters: The Scold's Bridle. Macmillan, ISBN: 0333618726 (May, 1994), 327 p., £14.99.