This book was very slow to get to the point and then it had no clear resolution at the end. I found it really hard to care for any of the characters so it was a real struggle to finish it. The whole 300 pages would have made an interesting short story but here the storyline was bogged down with many irrelevant details only to go into fast forward mode in the last twenty pages. I found it all totally flat. ( )

Margaret Yorke excels in writing mysteries that feature lonely middle-aged women. In The Price of Guilt Louise Widdows is the unfortunate heroine who is attempting to escape her unhappy past with a extremely controlling husband. The one word that kept occurring to me over and over with this book was irony. Louise’s outcome was ironic, but even more so was her bully of a husbands’ final fate.

When Louise’s mentally abusive husband disappears on the same night that she is the victim of a hit-and-run accident, it is her chance to escape and start a new life. She meets a journalist on the train and they form a friendship and she eventually dreams that he could be the son that she gave up for adoption many years ago. Meanwhile her husband is lurking nearby and he hasn’t quite finished with Louise.

This was a very low-key thriller full of interesting coincidences and suppositions. The author cleverly keeps the action subdued and her plot simple by relying on the supporting characters to fill in the blanks. This is an author that I have come to rely on for good psychological mysteries that don’t require unbelievable actions on the part of the characters or require the reader to make huge leaps of faith. I found The Price of Guilt to be both intelligent and compelling. ( )