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THEATENING EYE by Lesley Grant-Adamson

THEATENING EYE

By

Pub Date: March 16th, 1989
Publisher: St. Martin's

Grant-Adamson (Guilty Knowledge) tries something tricky here--a Ruth Rendell-ish teaser with the psycho-culprit front and center--but the result is actually less provocative than irritating and ultimately dullish. Someone has killed a young woman in the woods off the London-to-Harpury road in Hertfordshire. And the murderer would seem to be suburban married-man Roger Dale, a magazine editor with a secret life as a pornographer and seducer of teen-age girls. After all, we are taken inside Dale's panicky, guilt-ridden mind as he hides evidence, covers his tracks, and trembles at each visit from the police. But then we meet creepy young Jeffrey Miles, a moody loner who's been hired to restore some medieval carvings at a local church--and he is equally guilt-ridden: he shies away from all contact with people (especially women), lives in the woods, goes crazy when glimpsing couples in passionate embraces, etc., etc. So: which weirdo is the killer--and will he kill again? Mildly intriguing in the vicarage/suburbs/pornography particulars--but short on genuine suspense, crude in psychology, and awfully obvious.