cover image Mirror Image

Mirror Image

Lucille Fletcher. William Morrow & Company, $16.95 (222pp) ISBN 978-0-688-07749-5

When Robin Chodoff was eight years old, her younger sister Marya disappeared in Central Park. Nearly 20 years later, soon after Robin has met and fallen in love with a fellow she met while jogging, Robin's mother, a famous actress terminally ill with cancer, receives a letter from someone in France who claims she has seen Marya in Rouen. Robin flies to Europe and becomes entangled in a series of puzzling and dangerous incidents before she meets the young woman who could indeed be her sister. When the letter writer is killed and the putative Marya disappears, the police uncover a plot by the Terrible Kerenjis, a notorious gang of actors and criminals, to defraud Robin of her imminent inheritance. Back in New York, after her mother's death, she agrees to marry her suitor, but just before the ceremony she discovers Marya, dressed in an outfit identical to her own, hiding in the apartment. Readers will have guessed the true identity of her lover long before the impossibly naive Robin does; in fact the only question left unanswered in the novel is the identity of the woman who says she is Marya. Contrived and superficial, this romantic adventure by the author of the radio script Sorry, Wrong Number is competent but less than compelling. (June)