INTIMATE KILL

Another of Yorke's perceptive, well-crafted forays behind quiet English facades (Find Me A Villain, etc.). Ten years after his conviction for killing languid, self-absorbed wife Marcia, whose body was never found, Stephen Dawes is paroled. Convinced that his demand for a divorce had driven Marcia to a suicide vengefully designed to implicate him, he's also sure that Lois Carter, her bosom buddy and heir to her money, helped set it up. Cushioned by a legacy from his mother, he first determines that his ex-mistress and the daughter she bore him have flourished without him. Then, later, what he finds at the end of his search for Lois is a bizarre conspiracy, wilder than his imaginings, a dead body, and vindication. Slightly flawed by hard-to-swallow coincidence and a continued d‚nouement, this is still superior entertainment that combines restrained style and deeply probed characters with powerful suspense. One of Yorke's best.