Anthea Cohen was the pseudonym of Doris Simpson (1913-2006), a UK author who worked for twenty-five years as a nurse in hospitals and as a private nurse. She has written about medicine and hospitals, contributing to Nursing Mirror and World Medicine journals. She published many short stories and wrote young adult books for U.S. readers. She branched out in the early 1980s with a series of adult crime thrillers. The first is Angel without Mercy (Quartet Qrime, 1982; Doubleday Crime Club, 1984; Lume Books, 2016).
Night Nursing Supervisor Marion Hughes is roundly hated by everyone at St. Jude’s Hospital, a medical center in the rural town of Menton-on-Wye. All of the staff dislike her and the patients who have been around more than a day or two know she is trouble. Miss Hughes is quick to note the slightest fault in anyone’s performance and to maximize and report it or to tuck it away in the back of her mind for future use. Nothing escapes her. The quiet anesthetist Dr. Mayhew loathes her. She’s made Nurse Agnes Carmichael on the children’s ward a nervous wreck with her carping, and Nurse Hiram Jones on the men’s geriatric ward worries endlessly for fear she will discover he is stealing Nembutal for his addicted lover. New surgeon Nigel Denton gets crosswise with her immediately, and she decides to watch him for potential retribution.
Miss Hughes has set her marital sights on the recently widowed senior surgeon Sir James Hatfield, but he’s looking elsewhere. Miss Hughes lets Sir James know that she is familiar with some unhappy incidents in his professional past. After all, if he is not interested in her personally, she is satisfied with blackmailing him into marriage.
After a long night treating a bus full of passengers that turned over on a nearby highway, the entire hospital night shift is exhausted and relieved to turn the place over to the day team. Miss Hughes, with everyone else who worked through the night treating the injured, drinks some coffee in the canteen and leaves. She is not seen alive again.
This book is a really good psychological thriller. The book is dedicated to Patricia Highsmith and it’s easy to see why. The insights into the various characters, including the despicable Miss Hughes, are on target. The window into the background of a busy hospital is equally fascinating.
The ending was a complete surprise. I had no idea who the killer was, there were so many people with cause to hate the victim and with the means to get rid of her, I couldn’t choose one. Fans of psychological thrillers, character studies, and medically oriented crime fiction will be particularly interested in this book.
There are 18 books in the series. I don’t quite see how a series can be developed from this first book but Cohen did it somehow. Kathleen L. Maio reviewed this title for 1001 Midnights: The Aficionado’s Guide to Mystery and Detective Fiction by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller (Arbor House Press, 1986) and Mystery*File blog reprinted it five years ago. Here is her review with comments from blog readers: Mystery File, 4 January 2021, https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=72594