The Body

The Body is a study of jealousy. From the moment when Henry Bishop a middle aged hairdresser, sees a stranger gazing up at his wife's bathroom window, he is obsessed by a belief that she is unfaithful to him. Feeding on a few slight clues — &n entry in a diary, a whiff of tobacco in an empty room — this obsession finally blazes up into the .very ecstasy of hate. Its theme is admirably suited to Mr Sansom's talent for revealing the normal world as it appears in the distorting mirror of a mind under abnormal stress.