Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories

The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories
reviewed on + 194 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


In this novel, prominent historical writer Judith Chase is living in London and preparing for her marriage to Sir Stephen Hallett, expected to become England's next Prime Minister. Orphaned during World War II, Judith wants to trace her origins. In this quest, she goes to a renowned psychiatrist and becomes the victim of his experiments in regression. When a woman in a dark green cape sets off bombs in London, Sir Stephen and Judith are faced with an intangible, mysterious force threatening their very existence.

Obsessive love is the subject of "Terror Stalks the Class Reunion"; psychic contact with a dead twin sister is the only defense against a murder in "Double Vision; "Lucky Day", compared to O. Henry's "the Gift of the Magi", begins with a premonition of imminent danger; in "The Lost Angel", a desperate mother follows her intuition in a harrowing search for her missing child.