Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36684 in Books
• Published on: 1998-02-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Synopsis
'It was a slaughterhouse, the most horrific scene I have ever witnessed...Olive Martin is a dangerous woman. I advise you to be extremely wary in your dealings with her.' The facts of the case were simple: Olive Martin had pleaded guilty to killing and dismembering her sister and mother, earning herself the chilling nickname 'The Sculptress'. This much journalist Rosalind Leigh knew before her first meeting with Olive, currently serving a life sentence. How could Roz have foreseen that the encounter was destined to change her life - for ever? 'This is one of my books of the year' - "Sunday Times". 'A devastating effective novel' - "Observer". 'Awesomely accomplished...The plot twists and grips, like an octopus' - "Daily Telegraph".

Customer Reviews

innocent or guilty, that is the question.
Olive has been in jail for a few years after confessing to killing and chopping up her mother and sister after a trivial arguement. Roz is an author suffering from depression who has been pushed into writing a book about Olive due to her lack of new material.
Soon Roz is asking tough questions about how accurate Olives confession was and the reason behind the descrepancies. Soon she uncovers more than she bargained for and gets caught up in a plot B story involving an attractive ex-copper too (need I say more?). That was essentially the only annoying thing about the story.

I did enjoy this book non the less as the question of Olives innocence or guilt keeps swinging from one side to the other. It actually managed to keep me hooked as the writing built up the suspence very well.

A worthwhile read
To me this book was a liitle slow-starting as it took a few chapters to really get me hooked. Once the scene was set, however, I found myself enthralled by the many twists and turns. It stands apart from many of this genre by the way the culprit was not directly obvious- in fact, it kept me guessing until the final few pages which was a rather refreshing feature.

This was the first novel I read of Walters and I liked it so much I have already bought my second. I found it easy to dip in and out of with a simple enough plot that you don't have to keep turning back constantly to check who the charcters are. Altogether, a very good first-read.

The Sculptress
Even though I've been a fan of Minnette Walters' books for some time, for some inexplicable reason I had never got round to reading this book, one of her earliest, until recently.

It is classic Walters fare, with many and varied twists and turns, some brilliant false leads, great "flawed" characters (which no-one writes better than her) and some fantastic atmospheric descriptions.

For all this praise however, I didn't rate this amongst her best works. This may be just down to the ultra-high standards she has set in other works, that when she slightly misses the mark, it does stand out. For me, some of the descriptions of the characters didn't run true to their personalities. For example when we first meet the author Rosalind Leigh I got the impression that here was a put upon, almost downtrodden shrinking violet of a person, being forced to write a book she didn't want to after just coming out of a violent and tragic marriage, yet within a few hundred pages she has become a super sleuth supreme and has the courage of a lion to face down the would-be attackers of Hal Hawksley. It is also difficult to get a true handle on Hawksley character, was he a thuggish loose cannon or a charming hero? Even after finishing the book I'm not sure.

This all said it is still a very very good book and is a cut above many of Walters' contemporary writers' efforts. A compelling storyline, some fantastic characters, a "keep the reader guessing to the end" thriller, what more can we ask for?