Games of the Mind

Stella Roberts is in her mid-thirties when she marries Martin. They are an unlikely match; Stella is an artist with a history of mental illness, while Martin works in a government research establishment. Somehow, their marriage works, as they feed off one another’s idiosyncrasies. They could have lived happily ever after—if Martin’s job had not forced them to move. From London, Stella soon finds herself in rural Lincolnshire, where she has plenty of time to ponder the pains of her past. Lincolnshire is much too quiet for a woman of Stella’s demeanor. Luckily, she is soon distracted by a Victorian dollhouse she purchases at an auction held by a cultish religious group. The dollhouse greatly affects Stella’s mind. She imagines she is sometimes living inside the house, which exacerbates her strange psychological condition. When one of Martin’s female coworkers is murdered at Stella’s dinner party—a woman with whom Stella believed Martin may have been having an affair—she finds herself considered the prime suspect. Has her mental illness pushed her over the edge, or is there perhaps something more sinister going on?