Alistair turns out to be more persistent-and more vindictive-than Mary could ever have imagined. Bean, who's been mugged in the park, swears revenge against his attacker and considers a spot of genteel blackmail on the side. The police start to find street people gruesomely impaled on the ornamental gates of the park. But the menace soon takes on a sharper edge. At first the omens are only vaguely troubling, circling around the obsessions of Roman Ashton, a magazine editor sunk to life on the streets after losing his family to a freak accident old Leslie Bean, who can't forget his irregular relations with his late employers and Hob, who drifts through the park in a perpetual haze while he's waiting for his next fix. But there are already clouds Mary doesn't see on the horizon. Leo's as gentle and considerate, as sympathetic and loving, as Alistair was everything but, and in no time Mary's counting the hours between their decorous meetings. Taking advantage of her house-sitting gig outside Regent's Park, Mary Jago gives Alistair Fowler his notice and as if by magic, a new romantic interest springs up: Leo Nash, the recipient of Mary's bone-marrow transplant, whom she's previously known only as Oliver. (Oct.A delicate London flower plucks up the courage to walk out on her abusive lover-and into a vintage Rendell nightmare. Although unpredictable, the payoff seems a little weak and the careful pace somewhat slow nevertheless, there are no holes in this psychological puzzler that has a strong afterlife.

Credibility never flags as Edgar Award-winning Rendell ( Kissing the Gunner's Daughter ) reveals the specifics of Liza's increasing contact with the world, creating suspense in the gradually meted out details of Eve's intense attachment to Shrove House and her determination to protect Liza from civilization. Rigorously schooled by her mother, isolated from all society except, on occasion, the mailman or groundskeeper and the few men, including Tobias, whom Eve admits into their world, Liza learns early that others may have something to fear from Eve, but that she does not.

It is to him, over the course of 101 nights, that Liza gradually reveals her strange upbringing, living alone with Eve in the gatehouse of the Tobias estate.

After the police question her mother, Eve, about the death of Jonathan Tobias, the owner of Shrove House, 16-year-old Liza runs away with Sean, the young garden hand at the remote English manor. Like a modern-day Scheherazade, young Liza Beck tells her story over a span of nights and in the process finds salvation.

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