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(More customer reviews)"A Private Inquiry," set mainly in St. Ives, in Cornwall, is both an engrossing mystery and a compassionate exploration of self-deception and ultimate awareness. It is a story of two women, whose lives intersect through the machinations of a third. At first, the book seems merely to be about the increasingly troubled circumstances of 40-ish Barbara Pomeroy, a planning inspector, whose life with her much older husband, Colin -- a retired banker and now an amateur artist -- and their son, Toby, the recipient of a kidney and now a healthy, growing boy, has become fraught with growing despair and romantic distress. Barbara is put off by the appearance of a woman, Clarissa Trelawny, who has taken a nearby home and befriended her husband and son, while Barbara herself is away from home, at various planning meetings around the country, feeling increasingly isolated from the affections of her family. Meanwhile, a noted psychiatrist, Fidelis Berlin, 60 years old, comfortable in her prominence but achingly lonely without fully recognizing it, is dispatched to find the missing wife of a business associate, Neville, who is now a fond acquaintance and former lover. The lives of Fidelis and Barbara intersect, following the ghastly murder of Clarissa, when Barbara is thrown under suspicion. Throughout this involving tale, author Jessica Mann leads us, in her cool and considered prose, into the minds of a women who have shaped their lives so very differently: Barbara, who has made herself into a steely professional, self-absorbed but somehow dispassionate and longing for physical affection; Fidelis, clinical and observant, but blind to the nuance of feeling and emotional resonance; and Clarissa, whom no one really knows, and everyone has underestimated. How these two women come to regard the outcome of the turmoil their lives are thrown into, and whether they manage to grow, is part of this book's allure. Ms. Mann sketches the personal history of her conflicted characters with great assurance, a deft awareness of how we are shaped by the losses of our youth, and how a struggle for personal advancement is so often really a yearning for love. Atmospheric and absorbing, "A Private Inquiry" is a thought-provoking novel, more about self-discovery than whodunit, but at the same time a fully realized mystery, ultimately satisfying, poignant and memorable. Highly recommended.
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