An Open Window(1988)

Roger Ormerod

As Amelia Patton approaches a caravan parked in their usual spot, it explodes, killing the woman inside.

As she recovers in a hospital near the Welsh coast, she learns that she is the residual legatee in her uncle’s will.

As she cannot attend the reading herself, her husband, ex-Detective Inspector Richard Patton, drives to the Midlands on her behalf.

He finds that the word ‘residual’ can be extremely deceptive, and that the will is bound to provoke trouble between the children of Amelia’s eccentric uncle, Walter Mann, who died just two days after signing the new will.

Richard is intrigued by Walter had become a virtual recluse and locked himself away in his rooms.

But when he was found, having fallen from the third-story window and through the roof of his conservatory, the key for the door was on its chain around his neck.

Was it suicide?

In which case—why?

Or if it was murder, as Patton believes, how had the culprit entered the room?

And why the open window?

Faced with enmity and suspicion, and strongly discouraged from intervening by the police, controversies over shares in the family business, and a drama of love and betrayal, all make this one of Richard’s most difficult cases yet—especially with him hundreds of miles away from the hospitalised Amelia, and wondering whether the caravan explosion was in fact intended for her…

An Open Window is a complex crime thriller from a master of the genre.



‘Roger Ormerod is an accomplished writer of traditional murder mysteries who has earned himself not only popular success but also the respect and admiration of his colleagues...This is a strongly characterised, intellectually teasing story with a nail-biting climax, which any crime fiction buff ought to relish.’ James Melville, Hampstead & Highgate Express.

Roger Ormerod is the author of over twenty novels. He was born in 1920 and left school at seventeen to join the Civil Service in which he spent most of his working life. He retired in 1970 and later worked as a postman and in the production control department of a heavy industry factory. He lives in Wolverhampton. His other novels include A Shot At Nothing , Third Time Fatal , The Key to the Case and The Night She Died .