The River House

May 16, 2005
In Leroy's second U.S. release (Postcards from Berlin
), heroine Ginnie Holmes—a respected psychologist and mother of two—shakes up her comfy, middle-aged life by embarking on a passionate affair with a married man. The duo throw caution—and their bare behinds—to the wind every Thursday afternoon in trysts along deserted, woody banks of the Thames. As it gets colder outside, Ginnie and Will (aka Detective Inspector Hampden) seek privacy in an abandoned river house. One day, "entangled" inside with her "smoke and cinnamon" scented lover, Ginnie spies a suspicious-looking man by the river. Initially unnerved, she dismisses her reaction as projected guilt—until a woman is found murdered near that very spot. Thus begins the real conflict in this atmospheric love –story–cum–psychological thriller. Should Ginnie remain silent, potentially allowing a murderer to go free? Or should she speak up, and thereby expose her affair and ruin two marriages? As she frets over the decision, all the while juggling a career, an emotionally aloof husband, a difficult 16-year-old daughter and an ailing mother, Ginnie seems less a heroine and more a hapless fly caught in a moral spider web. Leroy manages to make Ginnie sympathetic—even though she isn't always likable—and her dilemma chillingly real. Agent, Kathleen Anderson
.

May 1, 2005
To saints and altruists, perhaps, the question of doing the right thing is never a difficult choice. For the rest of us, however, such black-and-white situations are often more familiarly cast in myriad shades of gray. Such an intricate moral conundrum lies at the core of Leroy's cautionary tale of desire and passion versus responsibility and loyalty, in which a middle-aged wife and mother jeopardizes her family's security when she enters into a furtive love affair. Set adrift in an emotionally bankrupt marriage, Ginnie Holmes is receptive to the advances of a handsome colleague, their weekly assignations quickly becoming the touchstone of her life. When she witnesses the aftermath of a brutal murder during one of their trysts, Ginnie is faced with the dilemma of concealing what she knows and protecting her affair or publicly testifying and destroying her family. Leroy's sensuously ethereal, subtly electric drama discerningly probes the affective fragility of a woman struggling to preserve all she holds dear, without losing herself in the process.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)