The Trouble Makers

Poor Mary. Her husband is so stingy and critical that he makes the other neighborhood spouses look princely by comparison. All of the housewives on the block complain about their domineering husbands, their noisy children, and their dreary chores. The women's only consolation lies in getting together to vent their frustrations and share the latest gossip. But when Mary spies a man in a raincoat, lurking about the neighborhood, she develops a panicky obsession with the stranger that her friends can't soothe — and the frustrations of everyday life suddenly take a sinister turn.
In this terrifying mystery classic, Edgar Award–winning novelist Celia Fremlin blends the desperation of 1960s domesticity with gripping suspense. "Women will identify and commiserate," noted Kirkus Reviews. The New Yorker characterized the novel as "married hell in a London suburb.... The outcome, as precisely charted by Miss Fremlin, is practically strangulating. A truly superior thriller."

Celia Fremlin (1914–2009) read classics and philosophy at Oxford's Somerville College. Her WWII experiences with the Mass Observation Project influenced her first book, War Factory, which reflected the attitudes of plant workers at a Wiltshire-based radar equipment factory. Fremlin wrote 16 novels in the course of four decades, in addition to a book of poetry and three volumes of collected stories. Her novel The Hours Before Dawn won the Edgar Award in 1960.