Blind Date

Amazon.com Review Frances Fyfield is a London criminal lawyer who specializes in complex stories about the tangled relationships between the sexes and the big and small crimes that result. Her latest is a subtle, slowly building story that gradually brings together a former policewoman intent on revenge for a murdered sister; two women who find that signing up for an unusual dating service might result in more action than they had in mind; and an apparently kindly and protective man who is also involved with the deadly dating service. Fyfield is the best in the business at showing how women's fears can shape their lives. Other excellent examples in paperback: A Clear Conscience, Deep Sleep, Perfectly Pure and Good, A Question of Guilt, and Without Consent. --Dick Adler Product Description Detective Elisabeth Kennedy, clawing her way back from a brutal acid attack, hunts her quarry through a London teeming with malefactors, in a mystery by a British author acclaimed by the likes of P. D. James and A. N. Wilson. Tour. From Publishers Weekly Fyfield (Without Consent; A Question of Guilt) is an oddly elliptical writer whose stories often sneak up on the reader. In her newest, three plot lines, quite disparate at first, gradually intertwine. Elisabeth Kennedy is a former police detective who had apparently caught the man who murdered her sister, only to have a judge declare she had entrapped him. The man then killed himself?but was he the real murderer? Two of her friends sign up with an odd dating agency to find men, and one of them gets killed, another roughed up. Meanwhile some of Joe Maxell's friends are signed up with the same agency, and big, kindly Joe is trying to share the London church tower where Elisabeth lives: is it to protect her, and if so, from what? Can her young nephew, Matt, obsessed with the precious stones his grandfather may have squirreled away, have seen his mother's murderer? In the course of her cunningly plotted tale, Fyfield explores many anxieties afflicting Elisabeth, her widowed mother and other female characters: fear of loneliness, of being unloved, of losing one's home, of creating a child you can't control. Some of these considerations fail to convince; nor is Elisabeth believable as a former cop, and that the entire cast seems to know each other gives the book a strangely claustrophobic air. But Fyfield is a superb, effective stylist who creates a deliciously murky atmosphere and indelible characters. Author tour. (Sept.) FYI: Penguin will simultaneously publish the paperback edition of Without Consent.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal British crime writer Fyfield has been gaining ground lately, and her publisher hopes that this thriller, featuring a former police detective chasing the attacker who doused her with acid, will be a big breakout novel.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist When an important case goes embarrassingly wrong for London policewoman Elisabeth Kennedy and her sister's murderer escapes punishment, Elisabeth retires and goes into seclusion. But when she's attacked and brutally disfigured--and, later, when young women are murdered by an unknown assailant--she is forced to confront the very fears she had hoped to escape. Elisabeth, scarred emotionally by her botched attempt to catch her sister's killer and physically by her mysterious attacker, stays mostly in the background. We see her most frequently through the eyes of people close to her: her mother, a couple of men (one of them a police officer) who are keeping an eye on her, and others. It's as if she's so afraid that she resists appearing in her own novel. This unique and fascinating psychological thriller will be just the ticket for Ruth Rendell fans. David Pitt Review Other writers are able to pull off this cat-at-the-mousehole plot tension, but few do it with Fyfield's assured style. -- The New York Times B