Eye of the Beholder - by Emma Bamford

About the Book

"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"--

Book Synopsis

"Highly recommended for fans of Vertigo and readers who enjoy the intricately plotted novels of Ruth Ware, Sarah Pearse, and Riley Sager" (Booklist), this atmospheric and sinister novel follows a ghostwriter searching for answers when her lover reappears after his mysterious death.

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 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 and mercurial business partner, Scott. 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?

Review Quotes

"Eye of the Beholder has metabolized Vertigo with such skill and originality, it transcends the concept of homage on its own terms, becoming a masterful work in itself." --Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

"Hitchcock's works are sophisticated, thrilling, destabilizing and lightly violent. So is Bamford's Eye of the Beholder." --Washington Post

"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

"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

"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

"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

"Ruth Ware fans will eat this up!"--Publishers Weekly