Caught in the Light
If you've read any of Robert Goddard's topnotch psychological  thrillers (includingBeyond Recall,Out of  the Sun, andHand in Glove), you know that he specializes in setting up an  impossible situation and then showing how it is in fact diabolically possible.Caught in the Lightis no exception.When photographer Ian Jarrett, on assignment in snowy Vienna, meets and falls in love with a mysterious woman named Marian Esguard, the sex is terrific and their future back in England looks happy. Jarrett walks  out on his wife and 15-year-old daughter and goes off to await his new lover.  But she doesn't show up, and Jarrett decides to track her down. In the  process he unearths an out-of-this-world mystery: Marian may well be a  ghost from the past (and a ghost with a grudge). That would certainly  explain why none of the pictures of Marian come out. During the 19th  century, a woman of the same name claimed to have discovered the  techniques of modern photography, but she never received the credit for  it.Quickly--perhaps a littletooquickly--other people appear on  the scene to explain the unexplainable.  There's the London psychotherapist who has been treating Eris Moberly (the  woman who calls herself Marian Esguard); there's a slick financier with a shadowy background and unknown motives. But despite these secondary characters  popping out of the woodwork, Goddard is a master craftsman: he lures us into his fun house expertly, then guides us through the dark tunnels, cackling madly. An added bonus is a reverence for  the history of photography, which lights up the story.--Dick Adler