‘Eye of the Beholder’ by Emma Bamford

Published by Simon & Schuster,
4 July 2024.
ISBN: 978-1-3985-2692-4 (HB)

Maddy Wight makes a living by writing other people’s memoirs for them – and a scant and precarious living it is until she’s commissioned by world-famous cosmetic surgeon Angela Reynolds, for a fee beyond her wildest dreams and the promise of high-profile contacts. But the job proves far more difficult than she expects. Not only does Angela require that she works in her remote Scottish house, and through brief online interviews; the deadline is far too tight, and personal information proves almost impossible to find.

The only redeeming feature, aside from the fee, is the arrival of Scott, Angela’s business partner. He and Maddy form a deepening relationship, marred only by his occasional lapses into depression so profound he seems to forget who she is.

Back at home in London, Maddy attends the launch of the memoir, and is as shocked as anyone to hear that Scott has been found dead at the bottom of a cliff near the house in Scotland. She has an even bigger shock a little while later: she sees Scott leaving an Underground station, very much alive.

This tense, pacy psychological thriller raises questions from the outset. Why has Angela chosen a relatively unknown ghost writer when she could afford to take her pick? Why is there almost no information about her online? Why is she so reticent about anything personal, and insistent that nothing of that kind goes into the book? And Scott: what is he doing in Scotland when his and Angela’s company is on the verge of a major development? Why does he undergo occasional personality changes? Who is the strange young woman hanging around the area? Is anything about the project what it appears to be? 

From bleak Scottish moorland with a hint of menace to luxury living with high-end art of the walls, overcrowded Tube station and sweaty nightclub to hipster coffee shop, Emma Bamford proves herself a mistress of atmosphere. There’s a claustrophobic feel to the story right from the start, occasionally leavened by glimpses of spacious, green parkland and empty streets in the small hours. This is heightened by the way the action rarely strays outside the core cast of three, and then only to three supporting players; and everything is perceived through Maddy’s eyes. It’s further reinforced because we never really get to know any of the six, except perhaps Sacha, Maddy’s friend and confidante, whose open and generous personality is a welcome contrast to the elusiveness and enigma of everyone else.

The questions keep on emerging and will keep you reading right to the big reveal. When it finally comes, it’s explosive, but not unexpected – very much ‘why didn’t I see that?’ rather than ‘where did that come from?’ As psychological thrillers go, this one’s a corker.
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Emma Bamford is an author and journalist who has worked for the Independent, the Daily Express, the Daily Mirror, Sailing Today and BOAT International. She spent several years sailing among some of the world’s most beautiful islands and wrote two travel memoirs about her experiences, Casting Off and Untie the Lines. A graduate of the University of East Anglia’s Prose Fiction MA, she lives in the UK.

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in Oxfordshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.