The Franchise Affair (en Inglés) - Josephine Tey

When a teenage girl claims she was kidnapped and beaten by two women in a remote country house, suspicion falls on the reclusive Sharpes-Marion and her elderly mother. Though the women protest their innocence, the village turns against them and the tabloids fuel the frenzy. Local solicitor Robert Blair, unaccustomed to criminal cases, finds himself drawn into a quietly explosive investigation.

The Franchise Affair is a taut, character-driven mystery set in a postwar English town, where the line between justice and rumor grows dangerously thin.