A new novel from this author is always eagerly read. In The Nature of the Beast, Elizabeth Manser is an under-employed lawyer, involved in a desultory affair with a married Queen’s Counsel. Because John Box is short of money they agree to act in a libel case, engaged by Douglas Petty to bring a suit against a national newspaper for the publication of an article and photographs that assert Petty’s cruelty and sexual deviancy. Petty, a one-time barrister disbarred for riotous behaviour, has inherited a fortune from his father on condition he provides for his step-mother and sister, and continues to run a sanctuary for abused dogs. Still rumbustiously eccentric, he marries the beautiful but unconventional Amy. Amy provides whole-hearted and unconditional love to Petty, and to the dogs in their care. But she has begun making regular trips to London. Petty’s stepmother and sister whisper about a lover. Then on one trip the train crashes and Amy walks away from the wreckage, and from her life with Petty. Elizabeth Manser feels compelled to find out why?
I like Fyfield’s work a lot, even if I wouldn’t go as afar as the English Sunday Express, which has called Fyfield. “The best female crime writer in this country”. Of her various novels I enjoy most those that feature the Crown Prosecution Service lawyer Helen West, and her lover, the policeman Bailey. In this book they make only brief appearances, although Helen’s advise to her friend, Elizabeth, is influential to the outcome.
Perhaps Fyfield, a criminal lawyer herself, feels she has gone as far as she
can with them and has decided to make them only peripheral characters, as in
this book, or do with out them altogether as she did in Undercurrents. In this
novel Fyfield certainly creates sympathetic characters in Elizabeth and Amy
but some other characters are fairly stock standard. For that reason, the parts
of the narrative involving the two women are much more interesting than the
somewhat lacklustre Petty family story and it’s resolution—although the theme
behind Amy’s story was portrayed with more menace and suspense in Fyfield’s
terrific Shadow Play. However, even a less-than-best Fyfield provides a very
good read for fans of the genre
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Sarah Seeberg
Frances Fyfield has two series, one featuring Helen West and her lover Geoffrey
Bailey, referred to in this review, and the other, featuring lawyer Sarah Fortune.