The Eye of the Beholder by
Marc Behm
pbk out May 99
(No Exit Press)
at £6.99
First published in 1980, this strangely hypnotic noir novel has been reissued ahead of a new film version, starring Ewan McGregor and k.d.lang. It's a bleak and bizarre tour of the US seen through the eyes of a private eye obsessed with a chameleon-like serial murderess, an excursion into near-madness that's written with the matter-of-fact nonchalance of mundane normality. The Eye works for a large organisation of investigators, and keeps his own personal demons at bay with his compulsive crossword solving. He is detailed to a routine surveillance and finds himself witness to a murder. But instead of reporting the crime, he finds himself drawn to the killer and, abandoning his job and his life, he slips into her shadow throughout her murderous career, becoming a killer himself to save her.
In parallel to his fixation with the killer runs his mental movie of his estranged daughter's life, and the two twist together inextricably in his mind. It's as if, deprived of the right to be a father, he transfers all his protective instincts to the killer. Weird and wonderful, there is no other crime novel quite like this.
(
Val McDermid
- Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill)
The Eye of the Beholder by
Marc Behm