Tabloid tale reworked in pretentious prose by newcomer Slate.
Who strangled ten-year-old Calista McQuade? It’s hard to care.
Everyone had a motive. Jared, her older brother, is a scrawny unrecognized genius who obviously resented his pretty, attention-getting sister. Her mother Melanie is a pill-popping southern belle who pushed Calista relentlessly to succeed at all costs. There was a price to pay: her daughter often wet herself (one of several similarities to the real-life Jon Benet murder case). Tom, her father, a tough investigative journalist with his own TV show, isn’t above suspicion—and that goes double for Nate Grumbach, the charismatic though faintly sinister child psychologist who treated both Calista and Jared. And no doubt Vin Anacleto, Calista’s muscular gymnastics coach, might have wanted to silence the girl if he’d been molesting her. And Courtney, Vin’s wife, blue-blooded and filthy rich, could have been jealous enough to kill. And so forth. Jared summons his creepy aunt Lex Cavanaugh, a documentary filmmaker, who flies in from London to help solve the mystery and settle old scores, of which there are many, plus dozens of skeletons rattling in the family closet. For starters, Melanie and Lex both loathe their social-climbing mother, but for different reasons. Frances Cavanaugh ditched their professor father for another man, abandoning teenaged Melanie but taking Lex along almost as an afterthought, eventually ending up in England. The sisters grew up apart, and there’s no love lost between them either. Cold-blooded, selfish Lex thought nothing of having a clandestine affair with Tom a few years back. As far as she’s concerned, Melanie neglected son Jared, Lex’s favorite, in favor of her precocious daughter. As for the ugly rumor that Melanie was actually impregnated by her own father—well, on Oprah, Frances says it’s true. More lurid details and preposterous plot twists abound—and oh, yeah, the murderer is caught before he strikes again.
Tabloid tale reworked in pretentious prose by newcomer Slate.Pub Date: March 5, 2002
ISBN: 0-7434-1888-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2002
Sophomore slump.
More psychological suspense from the author of Final Girls (2017).
Anyone who grew up watching horror movies in the 1980s knows that summer camp can be a dangerous place. It certainly was for Emma Davis during her first stay at Camp Nightingale. The other three girls in her cabin disappeared one night, never to return. Fifteen years have passed, years in which Emma has revisited this ordeal again and again through her work as a painter. When she’s offered another opportunity to spend a summer at the camp, Emma barely hesitates. She’s ostensibly there to serve as an art instructor, but her real mission is to finally find out what happened to her friends. Thrillers are, by their very nature, formulaic. Sager met the demands of the genre while offering a fresh, anxiety-inducing story in Final Girls. The author is less successful here. Part of the problem is the pacing. It’s so slow that the reader has ample time to notice how contrived the novel’s setup is. Emma is clearly unwell, so her decision to go back to the site of her trauma makes some sense, but it’s hard to believe that the camp’s owners would want her back, especially since she played a pivotal role in turning one of them into a suspect and nearly ruining his life. As a first-person narrator, Emma withholds a lot of information, which feels fake and frustrating; moreover, the revelations—when they come—are hardly worth the wait. And it’s hard to trust an author who gets so many details wrong. For example, Emma’s first summer at Camp Nightingale would have been around 2003 or so. It beggars belief that a 13-year-old millennial wouldn’t be amply prepared for her first period, but that’s what Sager wants readers to think. There’s a contemporary scene in which girls walk by in a cloud of baby powder, Noxzema, and strawberry-scented shampoo, imagery that is intensely evocative of the 1970s and '80s—not so much 2018. The novel is shot through with such discordant moments, moments that lift us right out of the narrative and shatter the suspense.
Sophomore slump.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4307-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Lacking in both thrills and chills.
Another homage to classic horror from a bestselling author.
Sager’s debut novel, Final Girls (2017), wasn’t so much a horror novel as a commentary about horror movies in novel form. It was clever but also very well-crafted. The author tried to do something similar with The Last Time I Lied (2018), with significantly less satisfying results. This new novel is another attempt to make the model work. Whether or not it does depends on how invested one is in formula for the sake of formula. Jules Larsen is getting over a breakup and the loss of her job when she finds a gig that seems too good to be true: The Bartholomew, a storied Manhattan building, wants to pay her thousands of dollars to simply occupy a vacant—and luxurious—apartment. Jules soon gets the feeling that all is not as it seems at the Bartholomew, which is, of course, a perfect setup for some psychological suspense, but the problem is that there is little in the way of narrative tension because Jules’ situation is so obviously not right from the very beginning. While interviewing for the job, she's asked about her health history. She's informed that she is not allowed to have guests in the apartment. She's warned that she must not interact with or talk to anyone else about the building’s wealthy and famous inhabitants. And she learns that she will be paid under the table. While this might not be enough to deter someone who is broke and desperate, it does mean that Jules should be a bit more concerned than she is when the really scary stuff starts happening. It’s possible to read this as a parody of the absurdly intrepid horror heroine, but, even as that, it’s not a particularly entertaining parody. Jules’ best friend makes a reference to American Horror Story, which feels less like a postmodern nod than a reminder that there are other, better examples of the genre that one could be enjoying instead.
Lacking in both thrills and chills.Pub Date: July 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4514-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
