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Eye of the Beholder
By Emma Bamford
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Table of Contents
About The Book
Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller Vertigo, the author of the “subtle and ominous” (Lee Child) debut Deep Water returns with a wholly original and sinister novel about the beauty industry, a ghostwriter, and the reappearance of the lover she thought was dead.
When Maddy Wight is hired to ghostwrite the memoir of world-renowned cosmetic surgeon Dr. Angela Reynolds, she thinks it might just be her chance to get her career back on track. She travels to Angela’s remote estate in the Scottish Highlands to hunker down and learn everything she can. But the deeper she digs, the more elusive the doctor becomes. Is there more hidden beneath the surface of the kaleidoscopic beauty industry than Angela wants to reveal?
Sharing the estate is Angela’s enigmatic business partner, Scott, whose mercurial moods change as quickly as the conditions on the darkening moors outside. Confined to the glass-walled house, Maddy can’t shake the feeling of being watched. As objects go missing, handprints appear on the windows, and a stranger lurks in the grounds, she finds herself drawn ever closer to Scott. Returning to London once the book is finished, Maddy is excited for their future together. But her dreams are shattered at the book launch when Angela learns that Scott has leapt to his death from the Scottish cliffs.
Which is why, months later and lost in a fog of grief, Maddy is completely blindsided when she sees Scott entering the Tube station just in front of her. It can’t be him, can it? After all, Scott is dead...or is he?
In exploring the differences between looking and seeing, surface and depth, and the power of the female gaze, this tribute to Hitchcock’s 1958 film masterpiece asks: If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, how much can you trust what you see?
When Maddy Wight is hired to ghostwrite the memoir of world-renowned cosmetic surgeon Dr. Angela Reynolds, she thinks it might just be her chance to get her career back on track. She travels to Angela’s remote estate in the Scottish Highlands to hunker down and learn everything she can. But the deeper she digs, the more elusive the doctor becomes. Is there more hidden beneath the surface of the kaleidoscopic beauty industry than Angela wants to reveal?
Sharing the estate is Angela’s enigmatic business partner, Scott, whose mercurial moods change as quickly as the conditions on the darkening moors outside. Confined to the glass-walled house, Maddy can’t shake the feeling of being watched. As objects go missing, handprints appear on the windows, and a stranger lurks in the grounds, she finds herself drawn ever closer to Scott. Returning to London once the book is finished, Maddy is excited for their future together. But her dreams are shattered at the book launch when Angela learns that Scott has leapt to his death from the Scottish cliffs.
Which is why, months later and lost in a fog of grief, Maddy is completely blindsided when she sees Scott entering the Tube station just in front of her. It can’t be him, can it? After all, Scott is dead...or is he?
In exploring the differences between looking and seeing, surface and depth, and the power of the female gaze, this tribute to Hitchcock’s 1958 film masterpiece asks: If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, how much can you trust what you see?
About The Author
(c) Diana Field Photography
Emma Bamford is an author and journalist who has worked for The Independent, the Daily Express, the Sunday Mirror, Sailing Today, and Boat International. She is the author of the psychological suspense novels Deep Water and Eye of the Beholder and the sailing memoirs Casting Off and Untie the Lines. A graduate of the University of East Anglia’s Prose Fiction MA, she lives in Norwich in the UK. Find out more at EmmaBamford.com.
Product Details
- Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press (August 6, 2024)
- Length: 320 pages
- ISBN13: 9781982170394
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Raves and Reviews
"Emma Bamford has crafted a haunting tale of intrigue with stunning simmering prose that kept me reading into the early hours. I devoured it!" —Emily Freud, author of Her Last Summer
"I really enjoyed this eerie, atmospheric mystery" —Louise Jensen, author of The Intruders and The Fall
"Bamford’s novel isn’t a strict update of Hitchcock’s masterpiece, but it borrows incidents and plot devices, like the use of a double, to create a clever homage. The medicalized wing of the beauty industry hovers icily in the background, while the sense of unease in the house on the moor is fitfully paranoid. Like Hitchcock, Bamford is interested in how appearances can deceive—and what our obsession with them reveals about ourselves." —Air Mail
“In tribute to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Bamford (Deep Water, 2022) pens a perilous and nuanced thriller on the dangers of the beauty industry and the lengths people will go to to get what they want...Highly recommended for fans of Vertigo and readers who enjoy the intricately plotted novels of Ruth Ware, Sarah Pearse, and Riley Sager.” —Booklist
"I prefer reading scary books in well-lit public spaces. That makes Emma Bamford’s 2024 thriller one of the best books to read by the beach this summer. A Gothic-esque setting in the Scottish Highlands? Check. Mysteriously unreliable characters? Check. A compelling premise that totally sucked me in? Check and check... I fell head over heels for this chilling novel inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller Vertigo." —Reader's Digest
“Ruth Ware fans will eat this up!”—Publishers Weekly
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High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): Eye of the Beholder Hardcover 9781982170394
- Author Photo (jpg): Emma Bamford (c) Diana Field Photography(0.1 MB)
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