Mirjam Pressler Rosengift (The Poison of Roses) Bloomsbury Berlin, September 2004. 250 pp. ISBN 3-8270-0554-X Nelly, a rose gardener, is intent on poisoning her husband - or at least that is the plot that crime novelist Lisa Bratt is working on when a homeless young girl enters her solitary life. Driving back from a reading, she spots Annabella being subjected to a violent assault. She stops the car and takes the girl home. The book goes on to examine, in her words and from her own point of view, Lisa's relationship with Annabella, mingling details of their day-to-day life with the plotting of her crime novel and with memories of her own past - her two previous husbands, her twin who died when still a baby, her drunken mother and her own isolated existence. As time passes, Lisa mentally mixes up Annabella and Anastasia, the daughter of her protagonist Nelly. The parallels between fiction and real life (or fictional real life) start to emerge, building up suspense as to what Lisa will do next. As Lisa reflects, in a good crime novel 'the tension lies not in the solving of the murder case but in the development of the characters'. Meanwhile the relationship between Lisa and Annabella is going rapidly downhill. Money has started disappearing from the flat, and Annabella brings home a boy, Micky, whom Lisa recognises as her original attacker. Annabella flirts, and finally sleeps with, Lisa's new boyfriend, Johannes. She also starts to return home drunk. Simultaneously, in Lisa's crime novel, the rose gardener begins to mistrust her daughter, Anastasia, switching her plans for murder from her husband to her child. Soon Lisa too is playing one of her own characters, and following Annabella like a detective. This is a tangled tale, with a grand guignol climax. Lisa's is a damaged psyche, and the conclusion of this skilfully crafted novel makes the reader aware that the consequences will soon be reaped. Complex, convoluted, this is Pressler at her best.