Shadow Play [Hardcover]

Frances Fyfield (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 1993

Crown Prosecutor Helen West is doubly frustrated. Her lover, Geoffrey Bailey, is off to a police education course, with weekend visits only a slight possibility. And she has just failed for the fifth time to convict a menacing little man called Logo. Brought before the magistrate for trying to lure young girls to the cemetery, Logo blames all his troubles on the daughter who ran away four years before. If she returned, he could stop chasing the others.

Until Logo misbehaves again and Geoffrey returns, Helen can just stew. Or she can strike up an unlikely friendship with Rose, a smart office clerk who has slept with most of the young constables in the area. Tart-tongued Rose lets down her guard for Helen. But neither one of them is prepared for the terror just around the corner in Rose's life--.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mr. Logo, a whisky-guzzling, Bible-toting road sweeper, desperately combs London for his daughter Enid, missing for four years. To prosecuting attorney Helen West, Logo is a public menace who lures young girls into graveyards, where, she suspects--but can't prove--he fondles them. His neighbors, however, consider Logo a harmless eccentric, and readers of this suspenseful, sophisticated tale of sexual abuse and murder only gradually become aware that he is a woman-hating maniac. West's office buddy, 19-year-old Rose Darvey, who has bedded the whole police force, is actually Logo's missing daughter, using an assumed name; she ran away with her mother to escape his sexual abuse after stabbing him with a kitchen knife in self-defense. Now her mother is missing, possibly a victim of Logo. Sexual banter and police camaraderie give way to a deep exploration of the rage, shame and emotional scars inflicted by child abuse, as Edgar Award winner Fyfield ( A Question of Guilt ) entertains with fully realized characters, withering observations on human behavior and a feminist heroine who swings between a wariness of commitment and a yen to marry her lover, an argumentative cop.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Brilliant, dark, scary and authentic. This is a book to be read in daylight." -The Globe and Mail

"Fyfield's intelligence is as ferociously penetrating as ever." -Kirkus Reviews

"If you haven't discovered [Fyfield], do so--. This psychological twister has a terrific villain who is so sympathetic you can't hate him - until the next page." -The Providence Journal

"A terrifying chiller in the tradition of Highsmith and Rendell. Sexual energy - female sexual energy - is one of the spine-chilling ingredients. The women have real sexual and emotional needs which are portrayed with devastating realism." -The Evening Standard

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; First American Edition edition (April 27, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679424024
• ISBN-13: 978-0679424024
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,376,544 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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