Description:
This first thriller by Irish television talk-show producer Julie Parsons became an overnight success in England and a high-ticket purchase by its American publisher. Here's why: it combines excellent writing with a strong, very moving story and a gimmick as big and shiny as the Ritz at its center. Dr. Margaret Mitchell, who left Ireland for New Zealand when her daughter was just an infant, now returns 20 years later as a successful psychiatrist and expert on women's mental health. Shortly after she arrives in Dublin to care for her dying mother, Margaret's daughter, Mary, is brutally tortured and murdered. I understand, thought Margaret, what happens when the heart stops pumping oxygen through the body, pushing its sweetness into every blood vessel. But I don't understand the loss of being, the negation of existence. It must be the reason why so many people believe in an afterlife. To make sense of the essentially meaningless. I know it in an abstract way, but I can't accept it. All I have is the knowledge that I will never see Mary again, that she has been taken from me and I will have to live with that. Until I, too, die. Full of rage and sadness, Dr. Mitchell watches as a once-brilliant, now-boozy cop catches Mary's killer but botches the case against him and raises the possibility of his serving just a short sentence. Enter the gimmick--which we won't spoil except to point out that anyone who doesn't have suspicions about Mary's father hasn't been paying attention. Parsons makes both Margaret and Mary memorable characters who throb with vitality. The final, hot-button issue is that of retribution, and Meryl Streep is no doubt working on her Irish-New Zealand accent as we speak, for the inevitable film. --Dick Adler
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