A Dark Dividing

British author Rayne (Tower of Silence) makes her U.S. debut with an intriguing if flawed psychological thriller involving conjoined twins. A bitter divorce has left London reporter Harry Fitzglen hard up and cost him his job in "the upper echelons of Fleet Street." Now working for a tabloid, Harry reluctantly agrees to cover the opening of a photography exhibit at a new Bloomsbury art gallery. Harry's editor suggests that he may find an interesting story in the mystery that surrounds the photographer featured at the galley, Simone Marriot, whose real last name is Anderson. At the opening, Harry meets and falls for Simone, but the focus soon shifts to the past%E2%80%94to the 1899 travails of Charlotte Quinton, who's expecting twins, and to Simone's own youth. Simone had a twin sister whose fate doesn't become clear for a while. A hackneyed ending undermines the power of the novel's earlier sections. (June)