Trick of the Eye Book

Faith Crowell is 39 years old, content in an artist's life that is solitary but not lonely. A specialist in trompe l'oeil - the art of painterly illusion that makes things seem to be what they are not - she is about to learn that illusion is more than a painter's trick: for some it is a way of life. Frances Griffin is a grande dame, a reclusive widow whose fabulous fortune represents the accumulated wealth of generations of American aristocrats. She is one of the country's foremost art collectors, but the commission she is about to offer demands far more than artistic technique. In fact, it will test Faith's very soul. For when Mrs. Griffin proposes that Faith paint the ballroom of her mansion, a room built many years before for her daughter's debutante ball, it is not Faith's talent that she desires, but something else. Jane Stanton Hitchcock has written a stunning novel with modern Gothic overtones set in the fashionable world where privilege and social grace mask a legacy of greed, deception, and murder. Behind the facade of exquisite beauty, behind the kindness with which she is treated, lies a landscape littered with horror and guilt. As the story rushes to a searing climax, Faith will face a shattering clash between her patron's spurious values - and her own hard-won vision of the truth.

Publishers Weekly

A tautly controlled narrative voice and a prose style that transcends genre key the action in this gothic thriller about a successful trompe l'oeil artist commissioned to work at a grand old estate on the North Shore of Long Island. Faith Crowell, a 39-year-old self-described ``spinster,'' is happiest when alone with her thoughts. Her ability to ``paint a variety of illusionary images on any compatible surface'' brings her work to the attention of Frances Griffin, a reclusive widow and fabulously wealthy collector, who wants Faith to repaint the huge ballroom of her mansion, the Haven. Mrs. Griffin reveals that the ballroom was built for the coming-out party of her daughter Cassandra, who was stabbed to death shortly after her marriage. As Faith begins her work, the grisly, unsolved murder comes to haunt her, and she sets about attempting to solve the 15-year-old case with the aid of her friend, Harry Pitt. The Haven, Faith learns, harbors many lurid secrets, not the least of which may be Mrs. Griffin's own connection to the crime. Readers of Hitchcock's well-made tale will enjoy discovering whether this master craftswoman of the art of surfaces will be able to penetrate the moneyed Griffin veneer and locate the shocking truth. (Sept.)