The Malefactor

A man comes out after fifteen years in prison for a crime he did not commit, rich and quite calm, and sets about the people who put him there — including the woman who married one of them. Oppenheim worked in his father's leather business for twenty years while writing at night, then produced some hundred and fifteen novels; this one is his coldest, and the revenge is conducted entirely within the rules of good society. Fifty-nine plates, among them William Orpen and Spencer Gore, gather the rooms, trials, and quiet interiors of a society that keeps its cruelty indoors.