Jane Gardam

Looking for trouble and finding it

issue 05 November 2005

Thrillers now come heavily disguised, and but for the blood-stained head-lamp on the jacket of this one and the warning across the corner, ‘Be careful who [sic] you trust. It might just be the death of you’, one would take the book to be a straight- forward, if lurid, portrait of a bright girl with an adrenalin problem. Holly Krauss, talented, good-looking and running her own successful business, is attracted to danger and bad company as well as to drink and sexual excess. After a long day in the office she courts sexual, financial and marital disaster of an evening. Bruised, beaten-up and minus items of her underwear, she always limps back to a (very unobservant) kindly husband who works from home as an illustrator. He is enigmatic but constant and sane. ‘Why do I do it, why do I do it?’ is Holly’s silent cry.

The book works because Holly can tell a good tale in the first person and is as open about her weaknesses and as innocent —and almost as silly — as Bridget Jones.

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