SIGNS OF LIFE

Another disturbed woman, this one consumed by guilt because she is running two lovers: her live-in partner and the new boy.

Halfway through you're thinking she has to be artful in order to introduce murder. Will she kill the wild one or the steady guy? Some action ensues as she does the right thing and ends the new affair - but only after she has become encumbered with the wrong one's cat. Can this be a pointer to disaster? Spurned lover now follows tradition: stalking, anguished pleas, threats, rage.

The style is comfortable but construction annoying with time shifts forward and back, insertions of modern poetry and domestic trivia. Not a crime novel then, nor a romantic one, rather pages from a psychiatrist's couch. Authors do evolve so the second book should be interesting.