The Chimney-sweeper's Boy

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The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

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First edition (UK)
Author Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell)
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre Crime / Mystery novel
Publisher Viking (UK)
Harmony (US)
Publication date
26 March 1998
Media type Print/Audiobook
Pages 352 (hardback)
ISBN 0-670-87927-4
OCLC 40980304
823/.914 21
LC Class PR6068.E63 C47 1998c
Preceded by The Brimstone Wedding
Followed by Grasshopper

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

Ruth Rendell British writer

Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh,, was an English author of thrillers and psychological murder mysteries.

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.

Candless's neglected wife Ursula gradually regains her self-confidence and begins a new relationship as she realises that the unhappiness of her marriage was due, not to her own shortcomings, but to her husband's latent homosexuality — indeed the reason itself as to why her husband became 'Gerald Candless' in the first place.


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