In the summer of 1989 the Iron Curtain was unravelling, and Daisy Hayes had just become a pensioner who liked to do her ironing while listening to the latest news on the radio.
The doorbell chimed. A police officer handed over a summons—printed in Braille. Daisy was being asked to testify about a baffling and gruesome murder, and had to follow the policeman at once. During the ride to New Scotland Yard, even before the first interview took place, the blind lady reflected that, though she knew nothing about this case, she would not be able to prove her innocence without revealing the two murders she actually had committed—many years ago.
In an original twist to the “good cop-bad cop” routine, the older police investigator in charge of this strange case seemed to be very much in love with the blind suspect, and encouraged her to come clean and find redemption at long last.
***
This is the third volume of The Daisy Hayes Trilogy:
I D for Daisy
II Blind Angel of Wrath
III Daisy and Bernard
Warning: a trilogy always has the disadvantage (?) that you have to read three books in the right order. On the other hand, each of these has a beginning, a middle and an end, and could be read on its own if you’re willing to miss out on the dramatic arc of the whole.
This trilogy as a whole is a story of crime, punishment, and redemption, and at the same time a portrait of the twentieth century as witnessed by one remarkable blind woman.
In the first volume Daisy Hayes is between 16 and 27, and she takes us along with her through World War II. The second volume brings us to the Swinging Sixties, Daisy is then 44. And finally in the third book she’s 66 and it is 1989, the year the Berlin wall came down.
Dear Daisy would have been born in 1922 and would probably be dead by now, or alternatively, still alive and kicking in her 90s