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Who is the man called Fox Evil? His 10 year-old son --- if the boy really is his son and really is as old as ten --- thinks Evil is Fox's last name. Certainly the word fits his personality and his actions. From the beginning pages we want to know Fox's true identity; as the pages add up, we want to know how he got to be as cruel and twisted as he is, and what drives him. It is not until the very end of the book that we will learn any answers, by which time Walters's sustained narrative tension will have stretched our nerves very thin indeed.
Since THE ICE HOUSE some 15 years ago, Minette Walters has been minutely and expertly deconstructing the idyllic English countryside and its denizens, male and female, human and animal. Her relentlessly dark view is enough to make even a fan of the gothic and the noir long nostalgically for the innocence of a Miss Marple, or of an Inspector Wexford --- for Ruth Rendell, even writing as Barbara Vine, is not this dark. If Walters gets any darker than FOX EVIL, her next book will be the fiction equivalent of astronomy's black hole.
Shenstead Valley is in Dorset, so ideally located between wooded hills and the sea that its small collection of houses and cottages, clustered about Shenstead Manor, has become off-limits to all but the stubborn old and the new rich. Most of the latter spend their weekdays in London, but a trouble-making few have chosen Shenstead for their retirement. The major available forms of recreation are the local hunt club, a little golf, and a lot of gossip --- the latter being of the lethal, not-so-idle variety.
Into this milieu comes a caravan of gypsy-like travelers, led by the man called Fox Evil. His son Wolfie is a precocious, starving, abused child who is the most appealing character in the book. It was for Wolfie's sake that I eagerly read to the end of this dark, convoluted and disturbing tale. Fox has brought the travelers to camp out on a few acres of land that he happens to know have no deeded owner. The travelers hope they may be able to claim it by the English version of squatter's rights, so they will have permanent homes at last. But Bella, a large, habitually purple-clad woman with a good heart, suspects Fox has his own agenda of a sort to suit his supposed surname --- and she is right.
The lord of the manor, Shenstead Manor, is James Lockyer-Fox. A former war hero in his 80s, James recently found his wife Ailsa dead on the manor terrace, dressed only in her nightgown and Wellies, with bloodstains nearby but no wounds upon her body and no visible cause of death. Furthermore, James does not know what she was doing out at night, with the door locked so that she could not get back in. He slept through it all. Though James was subsequently cleared of responsibility by the coroner and Ailsa's death was attributed to natural causes, his neighbors think differently and are subjecting the man to a vicious campaign of gossip and harassment.
James's troubles do not end there. The couple who lives rent-free at the Manor Lodge, supposedly in return for looking after the huge old house and James himself, are doing no such thing. James has been alone and sinking deep into depression until his young lawyer, Mark Ankerton, comes to spend Christmas. James and Ailsa have a son and a daughter, Leo and Lizzie: one is a compulsive gambler while the other is a mentally fragile drug addict. Neither of them view their father as anything other than a possible source of money. James, in the depth of his depression, has with Mark's help reached out to a granddaughter who was given up for adoption at birth. Lizzie is presumed to have been the mother of this now-grown child, but who is the father? The village gossips think they know, but are they right or wrong? Around the time Fox and the travelers arrive in the woods, granddaughter Nancy pays a visit to James and the plot is set into motion.
It never does move very swiftly, but this is, I think, by design. Walters has put us on notice by giving at the front of the book a parable of The Lion, the Fox, and the Ass. Her plot is contained entirely within that parable. The confined, almost claustrophobic smallness of it must be, therefore, intentional. But the true genius of this writer is found in her many-sided portrayal of the characters as they interact with and impact upon one another.
Anglophiles beware: FOX EVIL may make you want to run to the mean streets of Los Angeles or New York City for relief. Nevertheless, it's a gripping read that fans of Minette Walters will not want to miss.
--- Reviewed by Ava Dianne Day
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