Reliability of Rope

Reliability of Rope, paperback, signed by author.

When a hand delivered invitation to a funeral is dropped through Kate's door by mistake, she immediately knows she needs to attend. During the service she whispers 'Please forgive me' to the dead man Peter, and afterwards meets his son Anthony for the first time. Why does Anthony feel to blame for his dad's death when Kate knows she was entirely to blame? And why does the previous tenant of Kate's flat feel so much to blame for his death that she cannot sleep until she has returned from Portugal to apologise to Peter's wife? As more and more strands of the events leading up to Peter's death are gradually unravelled, Kate and her two new friends tell each other they should not blame themselves, but it turns out that they themselves have proved Peter's own words to be true: 'Rope is more reliable than people.' 'The lower-middle-class gentility of Lyme Regis makes an appositely deceptive backdrop for a tale that gets darker as it gets more complex.