Robbie's Wife
Poet, novelist and Fulbright fellow Hill (Lucy  Boomer) brings seductive intensity to this story of quiet  desperation and the corrupting effects of obsession. Jack Stone, a 60-year-old  Los Angeles screenwriter down on his luck and seeking inspiration, journeys to  England for what he hopes will be a creative reawakening. Instead, all he finds  is an endless supply of rain, pubs and bad food. Things get interesting when he  stumbles upon Sheepheaven Farm, where Robbie Barlow keeps a bed and breakfast  with his wife, Maggie, a tall woman with long auburn hair who moves like the  dancer she used to be. Restless and magnetic, Maggie exudes sexually charged  charm toward Jack, some 20 years her senior, even as she tends to cranky Robbie  and their school-age son. As his stay wears on, Jack grows increasingly fixated  and, when authorities threaten to slaughter the Sheepheaven herd in the face of  an epidemic, he finds the inspiration not just to begin writing again but to  make a move for Maggie. Those seeking a more action-packed Hard Case (such as  Max Allan Collins'sThe Last Quarry) may be  disappointed with Hill's deliberate pace, but he holds his own in the pulp  genre, lending graceful writing and three-dimensional characters to some risky  dalliances and gratifying last-act plot twists.(Mar.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.