Impersonator, The - Hardcover

Hammond, Diana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385423624 ISBN 13: 9780385423625

Publisher: Doubleday, 1992

Synopsis

A chance visit to a Manhattan nightclub begins an unending nightmare for just-married Jane and Robert, when they discover that a cruel man named Barrett has somehow "recreated" Robert's dead wife, Theo, into the club's singer. By the author of Sweet Lies.

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Reviews

Hypnotic and intriguingly corrupt, screenwriter Hammond's virtuoso second novel (after Sweet Lies ) is continuously charged with sexuality and menace. This is an utterly compelling tale of a master manipulator who insinuates himself into various characters' lives--and precipitates ruin at every treacherous curve. Shortly after the mysterious death of his wife, the glamorous, world-famous entertainer Theo Buckley, Robert de Pena ("trendy scholar, dilettante") hastily woos and weds Jane Donovan ("a Jane Austen girl"). Their problems begin when the couple encounter a nightclub performer doing an uncannily accurate impersonation of Theo. In quick, incisive strokes, Hammond delineates her singular cast, while her plot twists send frequent pinpricks to the heart, the brain and the gut. Even a central character's name--Barrett Rossignol--typifies the mixture of elegance and horror here: it's as if Noel Coward veered toward the macabre. Though the book's final quarter--the explanation of Theo's death--seems not quite up to its extraordinary precedents, this is a minor cavil. The beguiling Theo says in her writings, "If you turn the glass half a millimeter, everything looks different"--and different is decidedly the name of this unusually stylish game. Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Screenwriter Hammond (Sweet Lies, 1979) churns out a slick, sinister sex-cum-suspenser about a gifted, stylishly enervated chameleon's trick of haunting his clients, his lovers, and himself with secrets from the past. The Impersonator, whose name rather anticlimactically turns out to be Barrett Rossignol, first surfaces in New York's Touch Me Club, doing an impersonation of glamorous drowned performance-artist Theo Buckley that captivates her widower, Robert Elias de Pe¤a (``author of two slim but popular books of philosophy for the layman''), and arouses the all-too-justified suspicions of Robert's second wife, Jane Donovan, who comes home early one day to find besotted Robert in bed with the Impersonator. Two years later, unwitting Jane herself is living with the Impersonator, who's managed to insinuate himself self- protectively into her life. Ironic, huh? Meantime, cutaways to the Impersonator's previous domestic establishment (he'd been living with Marly, a 30-ish has-been who'd thrown away ``the potential to become one of the greatest actresses of the theater'') and a long flashback to his childhood (he was a poor boy taken up by a wealthy neighbor girl who grew up to become Theo Buckley) have prepared us for the earth-shaking revelation that ``there is no Barrett. I don't think even Barrett thinks there's a Barrett.'' Finally, Jane's brother Hal, testing the Presidential waters by announcing for the Senate, needs to reopen a discreet investigation into Theo's death in order to make sure there's nothing there for the tabloids, and Hal's investigator Jacklin can't help finding the Impersonator's footprints all over Theo's past, right up to the day of her death. The Impersonator's disappeared from her bed and board--no, he's returned to threaten her with a tire iron--no, wait.... It must have taken so much energy to create this handsome, androgynous enigma and give his friends their world-class r‚sum‚s that there's none left over to pull together the threads of this foolish, deluxe trifle. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This wonderful, difficult-to-classify novel excels in its character studies. Barrett, the mysterious impersonator of the title, has a disastrous effect on many people, beginning with Robert and Jane, whose meeting and marriage open the book. Robert's first wife Theo, a talented singer and comic, drowned in an apparent accident. The case seems closed, and Robert seems content with Jane, until the two wander into a nightclub and are drawn to Barrett's onstage impersonation of Theo. The marriage eventually dissolves, and the impersonator goes on to ruin more lives. Meanwhile, a private detective pieces together clues that may reveal how Theo really died. The people touched by the impersonator, especially Jane, are beautifully drawn and completely understandable. Barrett himself, who could have remained a mere shadow figure, is the most fully realized of all: an unwittingly amoral force who effortlessly creates the fantasy partner his victims need. Recommended for most collections.
- A.M.B. Amantia, Population Crisis Committee Lib., Washington,
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385423624
• ISBN 13: 9780385423625
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 358