My mad love of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys aside, I’ve never been a huge mystery fan. However there are exceptions. And I have the BBC to thank for opening my eyes to Barbara Vine. All right, I’ve known who Barbara Vine is for the longest time thanks to years of combing racks at the library and book stores. But getting the book from the shelf to my hand? That’s the hard part. But when you stumble across a BBC production of A Dark-Adapted Eye featuring Helena Bonham Carter how can you not a) plonk yourself on the bed to watch until the bitter end and then b) hunt down the book the show is based on?

Like other Ruth Rendell Barbara Vine penned novels, A Dark-Adapted Eye is a maze of twists that draws you right into the action. You can be on Mr Couch, stuffing your face with Hershey’s Kisses and reading and then you’re deep in the world of 1930s/1940s middle class England. In real life your aunts are on Facebook or watching Nascar but in book land you’re the young Faith, attracted yet repelled by her Aunt Vera and Aunt Eden as unstoppable events lead to tragedy.

The core of book are Vera and Eden. Although she’s married with a child of her own, Vera has devoted her life and time to her younger sister Eden. Eden, who in my head looks like a cross between a 1930s film star and a Mitford sister, seems to be a total Mary Sue. Eden is lovely, tidy, good, loving and caring. What could possibly make her devoted sister Vera stab her to death years later?

One word: Jamie. Each sister claims Jamie, a beautiful little boy, as her own. But is Jamie Vera’s son or Eden’s? There are compelling arguments for both. But the true answer dies with the sister’s. Eden dead on the nursery floor and Vera hung as Eden’s murderer.

Most writers would just consider the Vera/Eden/Jamie story enough. But a Barbara Vine novel is never that simple. Eden is a cipher. Is she the Mary Sue or the schemer? And what of Vera? Is she a pawn in her sister’s game? A unfaithful wife? Has she draw blood before that dark day when her beloved sister lay dead at her feet? What really happened to Vera’s babysitting charge Kathleen Marsh?

Every time I re-read A Dark-Adapted Eye the answers change. Sometimes I put the book down convinced Eden is Jamie’s mother. Other times I’m convinced Vera killed little Kathleen. And every time I’m sure that Vera is really Eden’s mother even though Barbara Vine never brings up that possibility. (It’s a combination of one too many viewings off I  Didn’t I Was Pregnant and the timing of Vera’s major illness with Eden’s birth and Kathleen’s death). An author and a book that makes you think beyond what’s on the page and references true crime in a non-sensational way is a keeper indeed.