Spider Girl

By Peter Lear (pseudonym)

Later reissued as IN SUSPENSE, by Peter Lovesey

Sarah Jordan, is a PhD researcher at an American university. She works with spiders. When she was small, Sarah hated them. In adolescence she forced herself to conquer the phobia, and now she loves spiders.

Discovered by a documentary TV team, she is groomed as a TV personality. On the giant nylon web built in the studio she feels strangely exhilarated, thrillingly powerful. People begin to call her Spider Girl. Love and fear, courage and neurosis are spun together in a sinister web as the novel is built to a bizarre and horrifying conclusion.

UK Publisher: Cassell, 1980
UK Paperback: Granada, 1982
US Publisher, Viking, 1980
Latest UK edition as IN SUSPENSE (Lovesey): Severn House, 2001 ISBN 0-7278-5746-0

“A good story, well told … This would make an entertaining movie.”
Publishers Weekly

“Excellent … a tense and exciting story building up to a web-spinning climax.”
Taxi