INTERMISSION

An actress struggles to save an old flame who may not be worth saving.

Enora Andressen had been looking forward to a juicy role in Dimanche, a police thriller scheduled to begin shooting in France. When Covid-19 puts the project on indefinite pause, she’s willing to flout Boris Johnson’s national lockdown rules in response to Hayden Prentice’s invitation to Portsmouth to keep vigil over his old friend Dave Munroe as Munroe battles the virus in the ICU of the local hospital. Enora and Prentice share a past as well as a son, Malo, now in his 20s, born of a single encounter aboard a friend’s yacht. Munroe was Prentice’s tame copper back in the days when he ran with the 6.57 Crew, an outfit that earned him plenty, none of it legal. But when the virus strikes Prentice himself, what’s left of his fortune isn’t nearly enough to keep him in his apartment with round-the-clock nursing, in-home ventilators, and professional deep-cleaning services, all provided by a stereotypically inscrutable man named Mr. Wu. Since Prentice absolutely refuses any other course of treatment, it’s up to Enora to figure out how to parlay the remainder of Prentice’s ill-gotten gains into the quarter of a million it will take to pay for his preferred medical regimen. And it’s up to the reader to figure out why a smart, talented professional would think it’s her duty to cater to the whims of a spoiled, imperious ex-lover who can’t think of anything but what he wants.

This early example of Covid fiction does not bode well for the genre.