Half Light

The finest medical gauze, sharp instruments for delicate probing, linseed oil...these were a few of the tools of Elisabeth Young's trade. A restorer of paintings, she delighted in her tasks: to clean, patch, fill in, and revarnish until the work gave up its secrets and glowed in its original glory. Alone in her London flat, Elisabeth savored the tranquility demanded by both her craft and her soul...a gently guarded peace shared solely with her latest lover, Francis Thurloe. Amiable, patrician, unconscious of his assumption that adoration was his birthright, the handsome barrister felt thwarted by Elisabeth's baffling mix of sensual generosity and emotional reserve. She did not confront, demand, or whine...nor did she confide her mounting anxiety over the suspicion that she was being followed wherever she went. And when she accepted an offer to restore a wealthy collector's paintings, stored in his cavernous mansion flat, no one knew that Elisabeth Young was about to disappear...
When the police find her car abandoned, and her flat tidy, with trash put out, their interest lapses: woman picked up and left, as single women do....no family, no close friends, not to worry, she'll turn up. But Francis, worried, begins a search that leads him to Annie Macalpine, an antiques dealer whose spiked-hair, lowbrow stance hides the bravest and hungriest of hearts...Enid Daley, Elisabeth's self-appointed concierge, whose jealousy of her winsome, serene neighbor curdles with venom...Thomas Milton, a patron of the arts whose private demons have forged a brutal sense of entitlement...Maria Milton, his sister, grotesque in form and speech, but solaced by severe religious rituals...Butler, Thomas's companion, ferociously loyal and trained to attack without mercy.
As a madman's vise tightens around the trapped Elisabeth, Francis and Annie hunt frantically for his elegant prison, where beautiful works of art are coaxed to life...only to be savagely destroyed....

Hegarty (aka Frances Fyfield) follows The Playroom (1991), her first novel under her own name, with another psychological study of depersonalizing imprisonment--although this time the prisoner is an adult. Elisabeth Young is a restorer of old master paintings. Beautiful and talented, she has an attractive lover, barrister Francis Thurloe, who fills her ``with an almost crazy happiness''; but she moves through London without casting a shadow. Her small-time dealer friend Annie Macalpine takes advantage of her lack of self-assertiveness to hold out on her restoring fees; her upstairs neighbor Enid Daley, despising Elisabeth every time she hears water draining from her bathtub, wishes she were gone. And then, one lowering Sunday, she is- -importuned by crippled, one-eyed Thomas Milton to restore three canvases in the opulent house that imperceptibly becomes her prison. Elisabeth's habits of self-effacement before her work make her the perfect captive, a beautiful twin to Thomas's ugly sister Maria, whose servility swings back and forth between worship and resentment. As Elisabeth, her personality merging with that of a madonna she's restoring, acquiesces more and more deeply in the way Thomas has made her part of his collection, Francis and Annie, having already fallen reflexively into bed, go hunting for her--Francis by visiting the bleak mining town she grew up in, Annie by going through her letters and a surprising cache of nude photos of herself--both unaware how explosive their discovery of her might turn out to be. No one, not even Ruth Rendell, can conjure more threats from the ordinary behavior of ordinary people than Hegarty. This pale, starkly understated tale runs over you like one long shiver. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Talented mystery author Frances Fyfield ( Shadows on the Mirror , Pocket Bks., 1992) has written a suspenseful, if somewhat depressing, psychological thriller, the second to be published under her real name. The police are not concerned by the disappearance of reclusive Elisabeth Young, a gifted restorer of damaged paintings. A self-employed single woman has every right to go off without a word, and with no evidence of foul play there is no reason for the police to become involved. The lady's would-be boyfriend, barrister Francis Thurloe, is less sanguine, and his mounting conviction that something is seriously wrong compels him to investigate further. His search leads him to the discovery of a shocking, traumatic event in Elisabeth's past--an event that continues to haunt her. Elisabeth, held prisoner by a madman, is indeed in trouble. This literate, gripping novel is recommended for public libraries where Ruth Rendell is popular.
- Elizabeth Mellett, Brookline P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.