A Judgement in Stone (1977)

Rendell tells you the crime at the outset, then makes you consider how shame, class assumptions and failures of attention brought people to it. Housekeeper Eunice Parchman works desperately to conceal her inability to read. Her fear of exposure meets her employers’ certainty that they understand her, charging ordinary exchanges with what each person misses. A strong choice when you want the pressure of an approaching outcome rather than a concealed culprit.