An unflinching and vividly told story of a broken human mind and the lines that separate murderer and victim.
When Probation Officer Cate Austin is given her new assignment, she faces the highest-profile case of her career. Alice Mariani helped her lover to die, and Cate has to recommend a sentence. But first she needs to understand.
Why did Alice agree to everything he asked of her? Ruth Dugdall's novels are pulse-quickening and compulsive, in the vein of Anita Shreve and Jodi Picoult. They are concerned with the lives of women and the moments in childhood that turn us, irrevocably, into the adults we will become; the harrowing paths that we take, the paths that we are unable to resist.
Ruth Dugdall is a British crime writer. She worked for almost a decade in the criminal justice system as a probation officer, specialising in the most extreme crimes when she was seconded to a high security prison. The Woman Before Me is Dugdall's crime fiction debut and is the first Cate Austin novel, it won the CWA Debut Dagger Award and was shortlisted for the 2011 People's Book Prize. The Sacrificial Man is her second Cate Austin novel. She is currently working on her third.?
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'Utterly chilling and enthralling from the first line to the last.' Karen Maitland
'An unflinching journey, chilling and insightful, into the darker reaches of the human mind.' Michelle Spring
