The Price of Guilt - Hardcover

Soon after inheriting a house and starting a new life in the village of Croxbury, Louise Widdows reads an Anita Brookner novel: "in elegant, measured prose the soul of a sad, solitary woman was skillfully exposed." So might it be said of this genteel English suspense thriller, whose hapless heroine attempts to make the most of an unexpected legacy while murder lurks in the background. Louise's husband, Colin, may or may not have driven the car that almost kills her in a hit-and-run accident. At any rate, after a loveless marriage, she has no regrets when Colin disappears the day of the accident with the contents of their joint savings account. Louise's thoughts turn to a long-ago affair, and to the illegitimate child that she had to give up at birth for adoption. Now that she's free of Colin, might she try to trace her lost son, who would be about the age of the kindly reporter who rescues her from beer-swilling yobs on the train to her new home? A fate full of irony awaits Louise in Croxbury, where a good deed--checking on an acquaintance's house while the woman is away--doesn't go unpunished. Like Brookner, Yorke is a master at making the reader care about meek and lonely middle-aged women. While the latter part of the novel largely fills in the motivations of minor characters in flashback, Colin's fate remains up in the air until the very end--and is as ironic as Louise's, if more just. (Mar.)
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Another of Yorkes signature pieces (False Pretences, 1999, etc.) featuring a middle-class life of excruciating desperation, this one belonging to timid Louise Widdows, a hit-and-run victim, who is released from hospital to find that husband Colin has decamped with their savings. An unexpected legacy provides Louise with Lilac Cottage, which she moves into, taking pains to ensure that Colin cant find her. Her worries, however, are far from over. Bullies assault her on a train; she still pines for a son she gave up for adoption years ago; Colins previous absences, she now notices, coincided with several girls deaths; and someone is staying in her new friend Dorothys house, uninvited, while Dorothy is away. Journalist Andrew Sherwood and his son Nicky offer Louise some comfort, but her unhappy life comes to a messy end when shes found pummeled to death at the foot of her stairs. Colin flees to France, Dorothys maid quits without notice, and there are several clever twists before Andrew and Nicky and a warmhearted librarian place floral tributes on Louises doorstep. If Yorkes specialty, an unrelenting, stinging menace that pervades her characters every nook and cranny, doesnt quite rise to the lonely heights of Almost the Truth (1995), its still commanding enough to confirm her place beside Ruth Rendell on the bleakest-of-Britain bookshelf. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.