Staring at the Light: A Sarah Fortune Mystery (Attorney Sarah Fortune Mysteries) - Hardcover

Fyfield, Frances

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670887307 ISBN 13: 9780670887309

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2000

Synopsis

A maverick London lawyer with an irresistible smile and a body to match, Sarah Fortune masks a numbed heart with a string of lame-dog clients and a retinue of eccentric lovers. Now she finds herself protecting Cannon Smith, a man whose worse enemy turns out to be his own beloved twin brother, Johnny. Long ago, the brothers were inseparable, but now they've taken different paths - and Johnny doesn't like that...not one bit.
It's hard for Sarah to believe that a man could hate his brother so, but Johnnyboy is truly evil. Inflicting the worst kind of pain is his deepest pleasure and there is nothing he fears - except the dentist's chair.

About this title

About the Author

Frances Fyfield, a criminal lawyer who lives and practices in London, is the author of twelve suspense novels that include Blind Date, Without Consent, Shadow Play, Perfectly Pure and Good, A Question of Guilt, and A Clear Conscience.

Reviews

The latest entry in Fyfield's Sarah Fortune series (Perfectly Pure and Good, etc.) sees the sexy, unconventional London solicitor taking on a risky case involving two dangerously close brothers. Misfit painter and ex-bomb-maker Cannon Smith is accused of manufacturing explosives and profiting from illegal business dealings, but his legal problems are nothing compared to the danger posed by his erstwhile partner in crime, his evil twin, Johnny. Now that Cannon has fallen in love and married the meek Julie, he is trying to steer clear of John. But Johnny fully intends to remain his brother's keeper, going so far as to have Julie assaulted and forcing Cannon underground. While Johnny needs Cannon's demolition expertise to maintain his extortionate real estate dealings, he also depends emotionally on his brother the way a sadist relies on a masochist. Fortune, taking the attorney-client relationship beyond normal bounds as usual, hides both Cannon and Julie, but there is a weak spot in their defenses: Fortune's dentist and hesitant lover, William. Fyfield has a knack for creating twisted characters, and Johnny makes an unnerving bogeyman--a pudgy psychopath with crooked, hideously stained teeth, a warped psyche and a deep fear of dentists. The Dickensian cast gratifies, and only a few improbabilities mar the otherwise suspenseful plot, which builds to a piercing climax. Fyfield's offbeat thriller hits a nerve, taking advantage of a universal fear of dental work and elaborating themes of dependency and revenge. Agent, Esther Newberg. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A new challenge for the veteran author's occasional heroine Sarah Fortune (Perfectly Pure and Good, 1994, etc.), a vibrant, red-haired lawyer who works for the firm of Ernest Mattewson in London. One of her clients is Cannon Smith, a gifted artist, now imprisoned for supplying explosives to the underworld and for stealing from his prosperous, vicious twin brother John, a buyer and builder of houses. Cannon's aching teeth win him temporary release from jail, in Sarah's custody, to have them completely redone by Sarah's sometime lover, dentist William Dalrymple. Meanwhile, Sarah has hidden Cannon's wife Julie, after shes endured a merciless beating by John's henchman, in the convent where her own Aunt Pauline, a nun, practices her faith. It's after Cannon's release that brother John is at his most vindictive and Sarah at her most heroic, as she sacrifices what may be her life to her feelings of responsibility for the safety of Cannon and his wife. Less mystery than psychological exploration of the aftermath of the brothers' early incestuous relationship; of impulsive, warmhearted Sarah; and of the pathological effects of needing more dental work than you ever wanted to think aboutall written in a lyrical style complemented by unremitting tension and a final ironic twist. A superior job from an old pro. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Just-released felon Cannon Smith and his wife, Julie, are being stalked by Cannon's twin brother, Johnny--a man who's afraid of nothing but the dentist. Johnny wants Julie dead so that he and Cannon can be as close as they were as children, something London barrister Sarah Fortune can't quite believe. Sarah, who seemingly will do anything to avoid having a respectable client, does her utmost to protect Cannon and Julie, but by the time she realizes that Johnny is as evil as Cannon suggests, it is too late. Criminal lawyer/novelist Fyfield delivers a climactic scene with enough horror to rival Minette Walters, with whom she has been compared, but the build-up is slow and disjointed. For larger fiction collections that already have the earlier books featuring Sarah Fortune.
-Jane Jorgenson, Madison P.L.,WI
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670887307
• ISBN 13: 9780670887309
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288