- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: Corgi Books; New edition edition (2 Mar 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0552145262
- ISBN-13: 978-0552145268
- Product Dimensions: 17.5 x 11.2 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,695,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Who is the current Queen of Crime? Rendell and James may still be jockeying for top position, but if Fyfield continues to turn out sterling work like this, they'd better look to their laurels. Each new book establishes her authority as a first-rate crime writer, and her territory is subtly different from her rivals. She is always good at the terrifying internecine warfare of family life, and demonstrates a scarifying grasp of twisted personalities. The plot for the new one is genuinely original: the troubled John Smith is set on the rack when the only person he was ever capable of loving is stolen from him.This is his twin brother, Cannon, who has married a woman he is deeply in love with. But seeing his brother's pathological desire to restore their relationship, Cannon (a sometime bombmaker and artist) goes into hiding. The quirky lawyer Sarah Fortune becomes involved with him and his wife, the real target of the disturbed brother. But is all as it seems? While delivering a powerful narrative of off-kilter psychology, Fyfield is really interested in the nature of evil, and the way in which her protagonists are obliged to deal with it. --Barry Forshaw
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'I doubt I will read a better book this year.' Val McDermid 'She is a writer of huge, weird imagination.' The Times
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have not read anything from Francis Fyfeild before, and I dont think I will again either. This book never caught my imagionation, but rather than give up on it I finished the book. Thriller was hardly a good discription , the author concentrated more on long winded discriptions of every suituation, and her charectors were all weak...My Feeling on this book is its to be avoided.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you are looking for an easy to read whodunit with characters who are easy to label then this may not be the book for you.
It is not a difficult read at all but it is not in the usual style of a crime novel, it is more like a novel. Though it sort of reminds me a bit of the Gwendoline Butler Inspector Coffin mysteries.
I was intrigued by the characters, none of whom is black-and-white, all good or all bad. The complex, interesting characters and the writer's assumption that her readers are intelligent people with open minds who do not believe someone has to be perfect for you to like them, were refreshing. Humans are made up of all our experiences, some of them very bad experiences, and how we overcome bad things makes us into individuals.
Unlike previous reviewers I did find it thrilling, staying up very late to finish it. If you were paying attention there were so many places where you realised something was going wrong, that an innocent, unknowning action or event was going to cause something terrible to happen. It got very tense for a while, but then the wandering style would calm things back down for a a bit.
This was my first Fyfield book and I liked the rambling style and attention to odd detail so much that I am here now on Amazon to get some more of the Sarah Fortune series.
It is not a difficult read at all but it is not in the usual style of a crime novel, it is more like a novel. Though it sort of reminds me a bit of the Gwendoline Butler Inspector Coffin mysteries.
I was intrigued by the characters, none of whom is black-and-white, all good or all bad. The complex, interesting characters and the writer's assumption that her readers are intelligent people with open minds who do not believe someone has to be perfect for you to like them, were refreshing. Humans are made up of all our experiences, some of them very bad experiences, and how we overcome bad things makes us into individuals.
Unlike previous reviewers I did find it thrilling, staying up very late to finish it. If you were paying attention there were so many places where you realised something was going wrong, that an innocent, unknowning action or event was going to cause something terrible to happen. It got very tense for a while, but then the wandering style would calm things back down for a a bit.
This was my first Fyfield book and I liked the rambling style and attention to odd detail so much that I am here now on Amazon to get some more of the Sarah Fortune series.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Tense, elliptical prose with flashes of real warmth and humour enliven Frances Fyfield's crime novels. She is a very individual writer - concentrating on the darkness of human existence and seeing it from the inside of her characters for the most part. Not for her the dull police-procedural approach to crime. Her character exposition is particularly good and her prose style is evocative, if rambling.
The plot here concerns an independent female lawyer with a penchant for lost causes, a mysterious death in the past which still causes reverberations for the inhabitants of a small seaside town, and a visitor to a remarkable hotel which eventually seems to take on a strange existence of its own. All of this is enjoyably eccentric in a way that has made Frances Fyfield one of my favourite acquired tastes.
The plot here concerns an independent female lawyer with a penchant for lost causes, a mysterious death in the past which still causes reverberations for the inhabitants of a small seaside town, and a visitor to a remarkable hotel which eventually seems to take on a strange existence of its own. All of this is enjoyably eccentric in a way that has made Frances Fyfield one of my favourite acquired tastes.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Complex, off-beat, original
I read a lot of crime fiction, and a lot of it is mundane and formulaic. Thank goodness for Frances Fyfield, who produces interesting, flawed characters who do not come out of a... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Happyface
Not her best, but her worst is better than most
Frances Fyfield is one of (if not the) most intelligent of current thriller writers. Her Helen West and Sarah Fortune novels are engrossing beacuse of their non judgemental... Read more
Published on 2 Aug 2000
Simply dreadful
I bought this out of desperation when I finished all my holiday reading and was restricted to a (very) limited choice of new book on a small Greek island. Read more
Published on 30 July 2000 by brown@hitcheng.freeserve.co.uk
Too clever for her own good
One of the few books that I've ever given up on. When reading a thriller I expect to be gripped by the story or characters within a few pages. Read more
Published on 7 April 2000
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