FROM THE PUBLISHER

No-nonsense prosecutor Helen West is a rare combination of jaundiced pragmatism and well-guarded vulnerability. Her take-no-prisoners attitude is legendary - she has always put the harsh strictures of the law first, the human tragedies she cannot alter, second. Yet rape is a crime that haunts her - particularly the latest case now on her plate. Especially because the accused is the fellow police officer and best friend of her craggy, rumpled lover, Superintendent Geoffrey Bailey. As she freely admits, she doesn't even like the accused, D.S. Ryan, a volatile and compulsively unfaithful man who maintains a stubborn silence in the face of the rape charge. In a case with a victim as pure as the driven snow and all of the physical evidence pointing to the accused, both West and Bailey assume Ryan's guilt. But slowly, preoccupied though they are with their own bittersweet love and loyalties, Helen and Geoffrey begin to delve into this most traumatic of crimes. And as they do, there emerges a man of consummate, cold-blooded intuition about women and their insecurities, a man whose charm, chocolates, and flowers guarantee him a ready welcome - and rape, even murder, without a trace.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Never less than fine (Shadow Play) and often spectacular (The Playroom), Fyfield, whether she writes as Fyfield or as Francis Hegarty, is an astute crime plotter and a crafty observer of the subtle nuances that permeate middle-class English mores. Here, she's in top form. As her two series charactersprosecutor Helen West and her lover, high-ranking London policeman Geoffrey Baileymove uneasily toward matrimony, a rapist is plaguing London. The main suspect is detective sergeant Ryan, who's not only a fellow cop of Bailey's but his protg. Ryan is not an especially likable man, and his past is murky. His most recent investigations involved a series of rape accusations by apparently confused women, and it's not at all clear whether or not the crimes actually occurred. Two of the women were pregnant and died mysteriously. Then Ryan's accuser dies. Meanwhile, a bald doctor pervades the narrative: oddly celibate and ever sympathetic, he has beautiful brown eyes and wears synthetic clothes that leave no residue of foreign particles after physical contact. The doctor visits with troubled women, bearing flowers and chocolates. Fyfield treads into dangerously murky territory, exploring the blurry lines between emotional and physical assault and the confusing legal and moral definitions of rape. West and Bailey may be put through too many emotional hoops, but Fyfield proves herself to be among those rare crime writers (Ruth Rendell is another) who can address provocative topics with intelligent ambiguity. (Nov.)

Kirkus Reviews

Helen West, a lawyer for London's Crown Prosecution Service, deals mostly with cases of rape and the often hapless victims she has to persuade to carry their accusations to court (A Clear Conscience, 1995, etc.). Here, Helen and her longtime lover Police Superintendent Geoffrey Bailey have finally set a marriage date—at the Registry Office—but Bailey has a serious problem of his own: Detective Sergeant Ryan, his protégé, whom he had nurtured to responsible maturity in the force and who's now a respected family man, has been accused of rape by Shelley Pelmore, a shopgirl with a taste for nightlife. Shelley's case is but one of several plaguing Helen and her trainee assistant, Rose Darvey. Anna Stirland, nurse at a women's clinic, is another, as is Brigid Connor, a woman addicted to taking long baths and avoiding the attentions of her husband. Mention of a handsome, bald-headed man runs like a thread through many of the victims' accounts, but when Shelley Pelmore is found dead in a local park, Ryan—suspended from the force but not in jail—seems the obvious killer, until Bailey, Helen, and one of the true killer's victims take matters into their own hands.

Masterful suspense, although tempered by the author's exasperating tendency to explore every character's psyche at tedious length and to approach every crisis from an oblique angle. Downbeat all the way but, still, powerfully engrossing.