SHADOWS ON THE MIRROR

A disappointing oddity from the talented Fyfield (A Question of Guilt, 1989), who now intertwines a group of lives in a manner so cunning, so intricate, and so corny that this would surely enthrall soap-opera fans. Attractive, red-haired lawyer Sarah Fortune meets fat, flabby, and virginal Malcolm Cook at a dinner party, then seduces and leaves him. He immediately diets, stops buffooning for his friends, and sets out calling all the law finns to find Sarah--who, meanwhile, has had other brief encounters, with equally unhappy men, all of whom are the better for having slept with her. The one man she refuses to deal with is evil-seeming client Charles Tysall. The obsessed Tysall, however, hires a p.i. to tail her--a p.i. who just happens to be Sarah's secretary's battering husband, whose mistreated dog (which originally belonged to Tysall's missing wife Elisabeth--a suicide who surfaces later) is soon kidnapped by Malcolm. Furthermore, Detective Inspector Bailey, who returns in a bit part, is working on bringing the scoundrel Tysall to court on insider-trader-like charges. . . Inexplicable motivations and coincidences abound--all in an overserious examination of sexual obsessions, master-slave relationships, and happenstance.