Review | L.S. Hilton’s follow-up to Maestra mixes glamour and horror again
Domina is a less sympathetic book than Hilton’s previous outing, the worldwide smash Maestra, but it still mixes the glitzy high life with sex and violence
by L.S. Hilton
Zaffre
L.S. “Lisa” Hilton scored a worldwide smash with Maestra(2016) by cutting chilly erotica with something wicked. Exploited by several horrible men in London, Judith Rashleigh became entangled in an art-house thriller in various chic locations in France and Italy: European Psycho, perhaps. There was glamour, but also a fleshly horror, as if Jilly Cooper had been possessed by Francis Bacon. Within three pages there are drink, drugs, sex and murder in a bathtub. There is also that Baconian disgust: “His slippery skin was pinkish, puffed out like new bread …” Judith has been undercover as Elisabeth Teerlinc, running a ritzy Venice gallery, largely for the glitz and cred: her first show is with the hip Serbian Xaoc Collective, which is a taste of plots to come. But Judith is also keen to escape her past. Fat chance. The prose is abuzz with name-dropping, of Caravaggios and rich Barolos. There are chic locales (Venice, St Moritz, Paris), nuzzling hanky-panky and more double-crosses than the church of San Zan Degolà as seen by a drunk Russian. The plot, more baroque than that of Maestra, is more confusing and less gripping. Freed from the humiliation of part one, Judith is a colder, less sympathetic proposition, but intriguing nevertheless.