The Impersonator

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Hypnotic and intriguingly corrupt, screenwriter Hammond's virtuoso second novel (after Sweet Lies ) is continuously charged with sexuality and menace. This is an utterly compelling tale of a master manipulator who insinuates himself into various characters' lives--and precipitates ruin at every treacherous curve. Shortly after the mysterious death of his wife, the glamorous, world-famous entertainer Theo Buckley, Robert de Pena ("trendy scholar, dilettante") hastily woos and weds Jane Donovan ("a Jane Austen girl"). Their problems begin when the couple encounter a nightclub performer doing an uncannily accurate impersonation of Theo. In quick, incisive strokes, Hammond delineates her singular cast, while her plot twists send frequent pinpricks to the heart, the brain and the gut. Even a central character's name--Barrett Rossignol--typifies the mixture of elegance and horror here: it's as if Noel Coward veered toward the macabre. Though the book's final quarter--the explanation of Theo's death--seems not quite up to its extraordinary precedents, this is a minor cavil. The beguiling Theo says in her writings, "If you turn the glass half a millimeter, everything looks different"--and different is decidedly the name of this unusually stylish game.