The Sculptress -- Minette Walters

***Spoiler of sorts at the bottom***

Five years ago, Olive Martin confessed to brutally murdering her mother and sister.  In and out of prison, they call her The Sculptress.  The name has two origins: 

1.  Since being in prison, she has regularly created vaguely disturbing small wax replicas of people. 
2.  After the murders, before calling the police, she partially disassembled the bodies and rearranged the parts.

Rosalind Leigh has received an ultimatum from her publisher -- commit to writing a book or be dropped.  The publisher also gave her a specific subject:  Olive Martin.

Within just a few meetings, Roz is almost convinced that Olive is innocent.  The more people she visits, the more questions she asks, the more holes there are in the original story.

Really fantastic.  Olive Martin is totally scary, totally fascinating and sometimes sort of vulnerable and almost strangely attractive.  There are twists and turns and more twists and turns and a Very Attractive Man with a Secret, I liked Roz and the writing is bang-up super. 

***I finished it this weekend and I still can't figure out if I've been Keyser Sozed.  It's driving me nuts.***

Comments

[Sarah]

Ooh, Minette Walters. I do so love Minette Walters. Have you seen the movie version of The Sculptress? From BBC TV or something, it's awesome. Ditto for the TV version of her book The Ice House (and, as an added bonus, The Ice House features Daniel Craig, the new James Bond, in an early but still extremely hot role).

[Leila]

I haven't -- I saw that Mystery! had done an adaptation, and I'm going to add it to my Netflix queue (assuming it's available). Judging from the pictures I've seen, though, Olive doesn't look nearly big enough.