The Blank Wall

The Blank Wall, published in 1947, is Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's masterpiece of domestic suspense. Lucia Dorvington, a respectable housewife whose husband is away at war, finds herself dealing with her teenage daughter's involvement with an unsavoury older man. When the man turns up dead, Lucia's desperate attempts to shield her family draw her into an increasingly dangerous relationship with a blackmailer who may be her only ally. Raymond Chandler called Holding 'the best suspense writer of them all,' and The Blank Wall shows why — it is a novel about the terrifying lengths an ordinary woman will go to when her family is threatened.