The Dark Eye by
Ingrid Black
pbk out December 04
(Headline)
at £6.99
This is the second book about cigar-smoking former FBI agent Saxon, now living in Dublin
and writing books and articles on crime. Her lover Grace Fitzgerald is a Detective Chief
Superintendent leading the Dublin Metropolitan Police's Murder Squad - giving immediate
potential for a long and fruitful (for the author) partnership.
The very opening of The Dark Eye (a phone call from photographer Felix Berg, claiming
that someone is trying to kill him and asking Saxon to meet him at a remote lighthouse)
leaves the reader in no doubt that s/he is embarking upon a gripping and involving thriller.
Saxon arrives to find Felix's dead body, seemingly another victim of the Marxman, a serial
killer whose grimly-punned name derives from the apparent socio-political motive of his
early murders.
As the body-count rises ... and rises, and more and more victims are connected to Felix or
are members of his circle, Saxon's investigations run alongside those of the police - the
difference being, of course, that she has no official status whatsoever, just a number of
extremely useful contacts. It seems to Saxon that the key lies in the several-years-old
murder of 15-year old Lucy Toner in Howth, the town where Felix had asked Saxon to
meet him, and where he had been living at the time of the murder. That this murder and
those of the Marxman are connected is certain: Felix was obsessed with both, as his
photographs, journal and collection of cuttings show - could he have been the perpetrator
of one or the other?
The story is truly intriguing, with many suspects obvious and not-so-obvious, and the
cynical Saxon, hard-bitten and self-contained, developing nevertheless as a sympathetic
and vulnerable protagonist.
The Dark Eye by
Ingrid Black
