Allen & Unwin The Hours Before Dawn book Crime fiction English Paperback 192 pages

In a new edition of this lost classic, The Hours Before Dawn proves - scarily - as relevant to readers today as it was when Celia Fremlin first wrote it in the 1950s.

Louise would give anything - anything - for a good night's sleep. Forget the girls running errant in the garden and bothering the neighbours. Forget her husband who seems oblivious to it all. If the baby would just stop crying, everything would be fine.Or would it? What if Louise's growing fears about the family's new lodger, who seems to share all of her husband's interests, are real? What could she do, and would anyone even believe her? Maybe, if she could get just get some rest, she'd be able to think straight.

Celia Fremlin (1914-2009) was born in Kent. Her first published novel of suspense was The Hours Before Dawn (1958), which went on to win the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1960. Over the next thirty-five years Fremlin published a further eighteen titles.