The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy
	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
Dewey Decimal	823/.914 21
LC Class	PR6068.E63 C47 1998c
Preceded by	The Brimstone Wedding
Followed by	Grasshopper

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy (1998) is a crime/mystery novel by Barbara Vine, pseudonym of British author Ruth Rendell.^[1]

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.

References[]

^ Vine, Barbara (26 March 1998). The Chimney Sweeper's Boy (First; hardback ed.). United Kingdom: Viking (UK)/Harmony (US). ISBN 0-670-87927-4.

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[1] Vine, Barbara (26 March 1998). The Chimney Sweeper's Boy (First; hardback ed.). United Kingdom: Viking (UK)/Harmony (US). ISBN 0-670-87927-4.

[1]

v t Ruth Rendell
Inspector Wexford novels	From Doon with Death A New Lease of Death Wolf to the Slaughter The Best Man to Die A Guilty Thing Surprised No More Dying Then Murder Being Once Done Some Lie and Some Die Shake Hands Forever A Sleeping Life Put on By Cunning The Speaker of Mandarin An Unkindness of Ravens The Veiled One Kissing the Gunner's Daughter Simisola Road Rage Harm Done The Babes in the Wood End in Tears Not in the Flesh The Monster in the Box The Vault No Man's Nightingale
Stand-alone novels	To Fear a Painted Devil Vanity Dies Hard The Secret House of Death One Across, Two Down The Face of Trespass A Demon in My View A Judgement in Stone Make Death Love Me The Lake of Darkness Master of the Moor The Killing Doll The Tree of Hands Live Flesh Heartstones Talking to Strange Men The Bridesmaid Going Wrong The Crocodile Bird The Keys to the Street A Sight for Sore Eyes Adam and Eve and Pinch Me The Rottweiler Thirteen Steps Down The Thief The Water's Lovely Portobello Tigerlily's Orchids The Saint Zita Society The Girl Next Door Dark Corners
As Barbara Vine	A Dark-Adapted Eye A Fatal Inversion The House of Stairs Gallowglass King Solomon's Carpet Asta's Book No Night is Too Long The Brimstone Wedding The Chimney Sweeper's Boy Grasshopper The Blood Doctor The Minotaur The Birthday Present The Child's Child
Short story collections	The Fallen Curtain Means of Evil The Fever Tree The New Girlfriend The Copper Peacock Blood Lines Piranha to Scurfy A Spot of Folly
TV series	The Ruth Rendell Mysteries The Barbara Vine Mysteries