Product Description

In Paris, American sculptor Ross Marteau is renowned for his sensual depictions of women's bodies. After his latest love affair ends violently, he retreats to his home in Texas to start a new commission. In his local restaurant he meets Celeste, a charismatically beautiful woman, and she suggests another commission to him - her sister Leda. Intrigued he agrees to meet Leda and discovers that as well as being the most beautiful woman he has ever seen she is also the most grotesque, her body distorted by her being a hunchback. Fascinated by the challenge sculpting her would entail, he agrees to take the commission. Soon he is obsessively in love with Celeste and obsessively intrigued by Leda, and he finds himself pulled deeper and deeper into their world until someone close to them is killed, and Ross finds himself so deeply ensnared in their web of dark secrets and twisted motivations that he is close to mortal suffocation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1070707 in Books
• Published on: 2002-12-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Penzler Pick, April 2001: David Lindsey can write horrific thrillers such as Mercy, which ranks up there with such serial-killer novels as By Reason of Insanity by Shane Stevens and The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. However, he is also the author of gentler tales--psychological suspense where the horror is subtle and comes from everyday and unexpected sources. Animosity belongs in the second category.

Ross Marteau is an American living in Paris, where he makes a decent living as a sculptor. After a particularly nasty breakup with his girlfriend of several years, he decides to return to his home in Texas and work from his studio in the art-friendly city of San Rafael. There he settles into a routine of working in the mornings on his next project and sharing conversation and a beer in the afternoons with his friend Amado Mateos. It is during one of these afternoon meetings that he notices a newcomer to the town.

Celeste Lacan is a beautiful woman who soon approaches Ross with a proposition. She would like to offer Ross a commission to sculpt her sister. Ross demurs--he already has a commission--but Celeste asks him to meet her sister before refusing, and when he does, he understands why Celeste is so insistent. Leda is not only the most beautiful woman Ross has ever seen, she is also the ugliest, and as a sculptor Ross knows that he will learn something new about beauty. As Ross begins working with Leda and meeting Celeste in the afternoons, he becomes obsessed with the two sisters. Life is about to become a living hell for Ross Marteau, and the ending of this story about art and love is breathtakingly horrifying. --Otto Penzler

Review
'A gripping tale with an ending that leaves you shocked and emotionally drained.' The Times 'A tense psychological thriller that doesn't need thrills and spills to grip the reader like a vice, and delivers a stunning denouement that reverberates in the mind for days.' Irish Independent

About the Author
The author of ten highly acclaimed thrillers, David Lindsey is also a passionate collector of books and has built his own private library next to his house in Texas.

Customer Reviews

ANIMOSITY
David Lindsey is a very under-rated writer and often I have felt that people do not do his books justice. I have read this thriller by him several times. I know how it ends and I am familiar with all the content, yet it is a book that continually pulls me back for another read. Not many books have the ability to do this, especially in the suspense/thriller genre.

The story is both simple and complex, which is one reason why it works so well. It has a variety of pace from ultra relaxed to shockingly violent. It both draws one in to the main characters and also repels.

The story is most unusual and concerns a gentle, sensitive artistic sculptor who lives alone in an old Mexican house and coutyard. He is invited by a beautiful woman to sculpt her sister. But, all is not what it seems. From beauty and love, come evil and destruction. Can one love two women? One of them has a murderous heart, but which one? There are scenes of love, longing and lust, but where will it all lead?

Through many twists and turns the book takes the reader through warm nights, heady perfumes, the open air beer graden with parrots where the sculptor meets with his only man friend. The sculptor's feelings of loneliness, confusion and emotion are extremely well portrayed, and the description of his dwelling and surroundings so vivid and realistic that one could almost be there.

Lindsey holds the reader's interest right up to the end - which is ... no, I am tempted to tell you. Read 'Animosity' and enjoy every word. It is both hauntingly fearful and hauntingly beautiful. After 'Mercy', this has to be David's best book - unbeatable - unforgettable.