Hostage to Fortune

There's hardly a splash of blood in this engaging English suspense novel; instead, there is the frisson of suspense as delicious, dark fantasies of revenge are conceived and spun out. For 25 years, Jeff and Susan Bentham have stuck to the chilly, loveless marriage they entered as teens, she playing dull homebody to the worldly lawyer who always has a bit on the side. But the pendulum swings towards Susan when she wins 1 million in the pools and sets out to redress the slights of a quarter-century. Gradually, anonymously, she strips her husband of all he holds dear: the semi-detached home she detests, his name, his work, even his best friend. Puttering about with his latest mistress in the butter-soft luxury of his new Rolls-Royce, Jeff barely notices at first, but the noose tightens uncomfortably soon enough. Gears grind too slowly in spots and Chaplin--a pseudonym for mystery author Jill McGown ( Murder Movie )--trowels on repetitious cliches: when Susan's masochistic affair wtih Jeff's friend Rob reaches a sophomoric sizzle, she repeatedly likens herself to a moth drawn to flame. These flaws aside, Chaplin winches up the tension notch by tender notch to a gallows-humor finale in which the tables are triumphantly turned. (Mar.)