Anita Shreve's 10th novel begins with a man escaping a hotel dining-room fire in a small New Hampshire college town. The year is 1899 and the man is Nicholas Van Tassel, a professor of English literature and rhetoric at the college.

As he flees the burning hotel, he spies an attractive woman standing by a lamppost. Instantly intrigued, he approaches her, and in so doing sets in motion a series of events that will change his life utterly. As Nicholas writes in his memoir of that life, "the fact of circumstance upon a man's destiny is considerable."

So begins Shreve's journey into the evil hearts of these two characters in All He Ever Wanted, a story that ultimately chills with its unrelentingly dark spirit.

The woman is Etna Bliss, governess, mid-20s, tall with golden-brown eyes of an almond shape. "Neither beautiful nor plain," Nicholas writes of her, but poised, enigmatic, "a woman of secrets." Though erudite and affluent, Nicholas is a complete counterpoint to Etna. He's physically awkward, with heavy features, and as pompous a dolt as any you've met in recent fiction.

He's a persistent suitor, however, and soon wins Etna's hand. But that's all. "I accept your proposal, Nicholas," she tells him, "but this must be said - I do not love you. Not in the way a wife must love a husband."

Still, a certain domestic tranquility settles over the marriage, bound as it is by the Victorian code of honor and common etiquette. Two beautiful children are born to the couple, who live in a fine home, take frequent walks on summer evenings and appear to be respected members of the community. Maybe, just maybe, things will, as they say, "work out over time."Nicholas writes this memoir on a train traveling from New Hampshire to Florida in 1933. Most of what takes place in the novel has already happened, and Shreve, with her renowned inventiveness, plays with time, moving the story now forward and now back, using this transference as an instrument of suspense. She was especially successful with this device, as well as with her customary off-center endings, in The Weight of Water.But despite the author's skills, there are disappointments with this novel. One has to do with language. We can accept a stilted, verbose style of discourse prevalent in 1899, but not in 1933. If you had been on a train that year, as Nicholas was, writing his memoir, and the man sitting next to you said, as Nicholas did, "I woke in a state of agitation and was forced to complete my toilet in haste," one must assume you changed your seat assignment immediately.A more serious flaw is the unrelenting evil with which the author has imbued her novel, both in the marriage and on campus. The halls of ivy hide as nasty an array of academics as fiction will allow. Schemers and plotters and hypocrites all, without exception. Worse still, the treachery carries over into the life of Nicholas and Etna, augmented just as relentlessly by additional sins, among which you can expect to find lust, greed, jealousy, betrayal and deceit.

We quickly come to know Nicholas for the imperious jackal he is, primarily because his is the narrative voice, and our loathing for him is unrelieved. The moral opposite of Nicholas, Etna remains what she was in the beginning, secretive, detached, still possessed of that "half-smile," perhaps hiding a past.

What's the real story of the expensive painting she said she'd never seen? "Did you know Philip Asher was coming to the college?" Nicholas asks her. "Is that why you dropped the champagne glass at the reception?" And for what reason, Nicholas asks himself, "Does a woman need a hideaway cottage that her husband know nothing about?"To tell more is to tell too much, for the author's chosen point of view limits the dimensions of her story and directs too constant a focus on the stricken couple. This novel could easily have been titled Bleak House. There's no promise of light in all the darkness, no humor, no genuine redemption. "What began in fire must end in fire," Nicholas declares grimly at the end, but by then we don't care. We're already burned out from all the dirty tricks and evil doings.

William Dieter is the author of four novels and a retired writing teacher. He lives in Denver.