THE MAN WHO CAME BACK

by John Rossiter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1978

Amnesia and reincarnation--in the workmanlike hands of an old British pro who seems far more comfortable in the action sequences than when flirting with the paranormal. Alex Shutler, badly hurt in a car accident, wakes up with no recollection of wife, friends, or his own identity; what he does have in his mind is, in vivid but flickering detail, another life--that of a WW II R.A.F. pilot involved 35 years ago in a stormy love affair (the pilot murdered his love's lover and later was killed in action). And poor, distraught Alex becomes even more distraught when he's informed by his shrewish stranger of a wife that he's responsible for the death of two innocent people--hit-and-run victims of the car accident that triggered his amnesia. Rossiter alternates between frazzled Alex and his flashbacked alter ego's military romantic crises--two lives that somehow merge when Alex tracks down and beds the woman, now 50-ish and still attractive, with whom his earlier self had that tragic affair. (Implausibly--or is it a fantasy?--she has kept the body of her murdered lover in a locked room alt these years.) As the police close in on Alex to nab him for the hit-and-run, he realizes ""the certainty that if payment was not exacted in this life, it would be in the next."" Some strong writing, some that's more than a bit overdone--and a story that proves moderately engrossing until it becomes apparent that Rossiter has no real surprises up his sleeve.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1978

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1978

Categories: FICTION