SOURCE: "The Woman Who Loved Dr. Jekyll," in The New York Times Book Review, February 4, 1990, p. 7.

An American novelist, short story writer, and scriptwriter, Crowley is best known for The Deep (1975) and his work in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. In the following favorable review, he briefly describes plot, theme, and characterization in Mary Reilly.

It has been noted that Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is as empty of female presences as a London club. The lawyer Utterson and the young businessman Enfield who between them tell the story, Dr. Jekyll himself, even the butler Poole, are all bachelors. Hyde's sins may involve women, but unlike Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Stevenson forbore to name them or to describe them except in horrid generalities.

Now [in Mary Reilly] Valerie Martin has had the terrific idea of retelling the story of...