This is Sidney Sheldon's first novel and I will start by saying that it's readable: the kind of book that you can buy at an airport or railway station and happily devour on a medium haul flight or a railway journey on virtually any route in the UK!

The structure and development of the plots and sub plots of this book are good: they move along nicely, they don't feel contrived and they lead us towards the denouement quite well. I suppose anyone who reads detective novels more carefully than I do will have unravelled most of this one at least about two thirds of the way through.

The story concerns a psychoanalyst: his daily round of patients who range from the ordinary to the extraordinary. We have the philandering high powered executive who has gone off the rails having lost his wife and children in an accident whilst he was sharing a canoodly moment with one of his mistresses. There's one of America's foremost comedians who turns out, like so many of the world's funny men, to be wracked with inner pain.

Then there are the murders! Someone is stabbed to death in a New York street wearing our hero's rain coat. Our hero's receptionist is then brutally murdered in their office. The net appears to be closing in on the good Doctor … the twists and turns are well thought out.

I felt a couple of the characterizations were a bit off: "Friendly, Charles Friendly" at the Pan Am office went from being all smiles to 'get out of my face' within a nanosecond and that didn't ring true. On the other hand, the characterizations of the detectives in the book are good. Anne, the mysterious woman that the good Doctor falls for is as transparent as crystal glass but he doesn't see it: ah, the power of love! It's only the twist in her circumstances that we need spelling out for us, otherwise she's most definitely a bother.

Some things got on my nerves: maybe Sheldon felt he was writing for a bunch of thickies when he put this together; but I really don't need authors to tell me the same thing over and over again. If I caricature what Sheldon has done, you'll see what I mean: the style I'm bothered about comes across like this:

'Dr Evil, the most dangerous man on the planet walked over to our hero, smiled and said "Hey, I like the cut of your jib and I think I love ya!"'

The action moves along and then when Dr Evil reappears, we are told something like this:

'Dr Evil's car, a big black shiney Limo, glided to a halt at exactly the appointed spot. Dr Evil's intentions are not honourable: how could they be for someone so dangerous? 'Danger oozed out of every one of Dr Evil's pores as he wound down the window, that sickly sweet smile ruining an already ugly face.'

Having said that, I realised that by the final third of the book that Sheldon had either lost this habit or I'd stopped noticing it … until page 219 that is when he did it again!

"Even Judd found it hard to believe at this instant that this gracious, friendly Adonis was a cold blooded, psychopathic murderer."

See what I mean?

The star prize here, though, has to go to some of what happened on page 210. In the middle of a situation when our hero is really in it way up to and beyond his neck, he has learned almost all he needs to know about the gorgeous Anne, when ...

"Judd steeled himself against the mixed emotions that were coursing through him. She did care!"

I ask you. A room full of murderous, threatening men who are just waiting for the nod to do the man in and he thinks such pre pubescent thoughts about a woman whose character and motives he had completely failed to understand and yet with whom he thinks he fell in love. Unreal!

Still, an easy read that won't break the bank. I read Bloodline, also by Sheldon, a few years ago and remember that as being a good read, too: much longer than The Naked Face, though.

Duncan Williamson
25 November 2001