HOT PURSUIT

In the middle of an oppressive heat wave, Gillian Adams (Bad Chemistry, 1994, etc.) has packed her 5,000 books, sold her house in Vancouver, and moved to London to live with her lover, Inspector Edward Gisborne. The prospect of calling on her old friend Charlotte Douglas seems like a nice change from sitting around the new apartment, sweating and mooning over unpacked boxes, but Charlotte is not the entertaining, successful TV producer she used to be. She spends her days in a kimono drinking wine and making bitter remarks about her ex-husband. When Gillian returns for a return visit, she finds her old friend’s dead body in the garden. Since Charlotte has made her the executrix of her will, Gillian has occasion to renew her relationship with Charlotte’s beautiful actress daughter, Olivia, while taking care of her mother’s legal affairs. Curiously, she finds, Charlotte has left her vacation cottage in Hampshire to the widow of a local man she accidentally ran over just before her life fell apart. Looking further, Gillian spots a connection between Olivia’s childhood summers in Hampshire and sinister Kevin, a disturbed young man stalking poor Olivia. Alarmed, Gillian asks Edward to help. Predictably, however, the police cannot provide adequate protection, and it’s up to plucky Olivia to save herself.

All this adds up to something less than hot pursuit. Call it torpid languor punctuated by the occasional hot flash.