It was first published in Britain by Gollancz (with a cover by du Maurier's daughter Flavia Tower[1][4]), and in America by Doubleday under the title Don't Look Now.

[5] John and his grief-stricken wife Laura take a holiday in Venice following the death of their daughter, Christine, from meningitis; their son, Johnnie, attends a preparatory school in England.

During a night out, John hears a cry and sees what appears to be a small girl wearing a pixie-hood running along an alley and leaping across some moored canal boats before disappearing into a nearby house, apparently intent on escaping from unseen danger.

As he slumps to the floor, John has a vision of the vaporetto and realises it is a premonition of the scene in a few days' time when Laura and the sisters will return for his funeral.

Timothy Grey, a preparatory school headmaster, takes a holiday to the Greek island of Crete with the intent of finding some solitude in which to paint.

One morning, Grey follows the couple and discovers that their days are being spent collecting ancient artefacts from a local shipwreck, with Mrs Stoll diving and supplying the finds to her husband on the beach.

Shelagh Money, a 19-year-old aspiring actress who goes by the stage name of Jennifer Blair, is looking forward to her first big theatre role, playing Viola/Cesaro in Twelfth Night.

She is shocked to see that he keeps on his desk a framed copy of her father's wedding photograph, which had been doctored to swap around the heads of the groom and the best man.

A disparate party from the middle-class village of Little Bletford take a sightseeing cruise to Middle East, led by their local vicar.

When their vicar falls ill, just before a planned 24-hour excursion ashore to Jerusalem, his place is taken by the inexperienced Reverend Babcock, a man more used to mixing with the youth of his own slum parish in Huddersfield.

On arrival, Stephen discovers that he is expected to help operate the computer for an experiment to trap a human's vital spark, or psychic energy, at the point of death and prevent it from going to waste.

As Ken lies on the point of death he is put under hypnosis along with Niki, a backward child whom the scientists have found to be susceptible.

In 1932, du Maurier had met and been attracted to the British officer Eric Dorman-Smith, who in the post-war years became involved with the IRA.

While acknowledging du Maurier's popularity, she felt the book to be "a collection of five uneasy pieces" in which "the reader is given an intriguing situation, a series of neatly planted clues and a generous number of plot twists".

[8] Du Maurier's biographer Margaret Forster considered "Not After Midnight" to be a 'not very successful story', demonstrating how the author's liking for intricate plot could lead her into complications which made her writing tortuous.

[9] She thought however that "The Way of the Cross" worked well, and noted that at one stage du Maurier considered turning it into a novel but was worried that she would not be able to maintain the tension.

[6] The story "Don't Look Now" has been adapted in several media: a 1973 film directed by Nicolas Roeg; a 2001 BBC Radio 4 Classic Serial by Ronald Frame;[10] and a 2007 stage play by Nell Leyshon.