Contained between sunfall and dawn of a single night, Tanith Lee’s Death of the Day sets out to investigate not only a string of bizarre deaths, but the facades behind which men and women exist. An intriguing detective novel, darkly lit and ominously rich.
250 pp approx. 6×9-format paperback novel.
ISBN: 978-1-84583-911-6
Published 30 April 2015
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tanith Lee was born in North London (UK) in 1947. Because her parents were professional dancers (ballroom, Latin American) and had to live where the work was, she attended a number of truly terrible schools, and didn’t learn to read – she was also dyslexic – until almost age 8. And then only because her father taught her. This opened the world of books to Lee, and by 9 she was writing. After much better education at a grammar school, Lee went on to work in a library. This was followed by various other jobs – shop assistant, waitress, clerk – plus a year at art college when she was 25-26. In 1974 this mosaic ended when DAW Books of America, under the leadership of Donald A Wollheim, bought and published Lee’s The Birthgrave, and thereafter 26 of her novels and collections.
Lee went on to write around 90 books, and approaching 300 short stories. Four of her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC; she also wrote two episodes (‘Sarcophagus’ and ‘Sand’) for the TV series Blake’s 7. Some of her stories regularly get read on Radio 7.
Lee wrote in many styles in and across many genres, including Horror, SF and Fantasy, Historical, Detective, Contemporary-Psychological, Children and Young Adult. Her preoccupation, though, was always people.
In 1992 she married the writer-artist-photographer John Kaiine, her companion since 1987. They lived on the Sussex Weald, near the sea, in a house full of books and plants, with two black and white overlords called cats.
Tanith Lee passed away on 24 May 2015.
David J. Howe –
From Peter Tennant, BLACK STATIC Magazine
‘Lee’s writing is as effective as elsewhere, with her penchant for vivid descriptions and the peculiarly apt phrase given full wing, but that’s really only a small part of what is on offer here. Also vital to the book is the meticulous plotting, with each and every disparate element eventually fitting together like the components of a finely tuned machine.’