The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy is a crime/mystery novel by Barbara Vine, pseudonym of British author Ruth Rendell.

Plot summary

When successful author Gerald Candless dies of a sudden heart attack, his eldest daughter Sarah is approached by her father's publisher with a view to writing a biography about his life. Sarah embarks on the memoir but soon discovers that her perfect father was not all he appeared to be, and that in fact he wasn't Gerald Candless at all.

Reception

Kirkus Reviews called the novel a "slow-moving, richly textured suspenser" and wrote that it "shows Vine at her most weblike". The Virginia Quarterly Review stated: "Reminiscent of Mary Gordon's memoir about her search for the reality of her writer father, this is a superb work of fiction."Library Journal called the audiobook an "entertaining listening experience in the low-violence mystery/suspense genre."