Animosity - Tapa dura

A gripping tale with an ending that leaves you shocked and emotionally drained. (The Times)

A tense psychological thriller that doesn't need thrills and spills to grip the reader like a vice, and delivers a stunning denouement that reverberates in the mind for days. (Irish Independent)

David Lindsey can write horrific thrillers such as Mercy, which ranks up there with such serial-killer novels as By Reason of Insanity by Shane Stevens and The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. However, he is also the author of gentler tales--psychological suspense where the horror is subtle and comes from everyday and unexpected sources. Animosity belongs in the second category. (Ross Marteau is an American living in Paris, where he makes a decent living as a sculptor. After a particularly nasty breakup with his girlfriend of several years, he decides to return to his home in Texas and work from his studio in the art-friendly city)

Celeste Lacan is a beautiful woman who soon approaches Ross with a proposition. She would like to offer Ross a commission to sculpt her sister. Ross demurs--he already has a commission--but Celeste asks him to meet her sister before refusing, and when he (Otto Penzler, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW)

In Paris, American sculptor Ross Marteau is renowned for his sensual depictions of women's bodies. After his latest love affair ends violently, he retreats to his home in Texas to start a new commission. In his local restaurant he meets Celeste, a charismatically beautiful woman, and she suggests another commission to him - her sister Leda. Intrigued he agrees to meet Leda and discovers that as well as being the most beautiful woman he has ever seen she is also the most grotesque, her body distorted by her being a hunchback. Fascinated by the challenge sculpting her would entail, he agrees to take the commission. Soon he is obsessively in love with Celeste and obsessively intrigued by Leda, and he finds himself pulled deeper and deeper into their world until someone close to them is killed, and Ross finds himself so deeply ensnared in their web of dark secrets and twisted motivations that he is close to mortal suffocation.