Animosity
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Ross Marteau is the toast of the international art world for his sensual sculptures of rich and famous women, but when a long-term relationship ends badly, he retreats to his Texas hometown -- only to have his newfound peace of mind permanently, and profoundly, shattered.
One afternoon over lunch, Ross is approached by a woman to whom he feels an irresistible attraction. She introduces herself as Celeste Lacan and asks him to take on a new commission: a sculpture of her younger sister, Leda. She promises that the job will present artistic challenges unlike any he has encountered before.
Though reluctant, Ross can't help but be intrigued -- by Celeste herself and by a photo of Leda's face, a portrait of incomparable beauty.
When he meets her, Ross is stunned to discover that Leda's body is as startlingly unique as her face is beautiful. Just as Celeste predicted, he becomes consumed with portraying the duality of her body . . . and, perhaps, her soul.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in the art world, this latest psychological thriller by suspense veteran Lindsey (Mercy; Color of Night) is an alternately entertaining and frustrating tale of a sculptor's entanglement in revenge and murder. Ross Marteau makes a handsome living sculpting female nudes from glamorous live models. After a bad breakup in Paris, he returns home to San Rafael a chic, artsy enclave in the Texas hill country for his next commission. Upon his arrival, exotically beautiful newcomer C leste Lacan seeks him out and persuades him to sculpt her sister, Leda. Leda is striking in a photograph C leste shows Ross, but Leda, C leste hints, is not an ordinary beauty she will be a unique artistic challenge. As Ross soon discovers, Leda is a hunchback, stunning from some angles and startling from others. As Ross begins sketching her daily, and he and C leste become romantically involved, he glimpses details of the sordid arrangement that binds the sisters to each other and to C leste's abusive husband. There is an eerie tension among Ross, C leste and Leda, which heightens when a murder disturbs the calm of San Rafael. Lindsey conceives an intriguing scenario and wrestles his story through unexpected turns. At time his efforts to conceal surprises make the writing, and especially the dialogue, irritatingly vague, and Ross becomes less sympathetic as time after time he fails to ask obvious questions when subjected to the sisters' cryptic babbling. But as the end approaches, Lindsey's obfuscation pays off, and a few clever twists are guaranteed to throw readers for a delicious loop. National advertising.