A clever, engaging diversion with just enough substance to chew on.
Following a novel of magic and ancient Egypt (The Alchemist, 2001) and a romantic werewolf series (The Passion, 1998; etc.), Boyd offers an intriguing, though never actually scary, ghost story (with echoes of the movie The Others).
Mary wakes without memory in a undefined place, then returns to her home, where she catches momentary glimpses of Paul and Elsie Mason, whom she believes to be her family. Her circumstances and formal diction tell us she’s a ghost long before she figures it out. Paul, a once successful author with writer’s block, and Elsie, his unhappy, isolated,13-year-old daughter, are spending the summer at the lake-house outside Chapel Hill; his wife, Penny, a busy surgeon, joins them when she can, which isn’t often. Paul’s brief, thoughtless, affair with a student cost him his teaching job, and Penny’s near-total absorption in her work has their marriage hanging by a thread and has put their daughter in therapy. Elsie and Paul, separately, encounter Mary; Penny, when she visits, has disturbing, blood-soaked dreams of murder. Because they’re so alienated from one another, their experiences remain secrets, driving the family further apart, until Paul and Elsie finally speak up and form a new bond, discussing and researching their ghost. Cathy, Paul’s sister and Penny’s best friend, coping with her husband’s terminal cancer, has thrown herself into researching her family history; Cathy’s loss, meanwhile, makes Penny rediscover her love for Paul, and her research reveals that a Mason ancestor murdered Mary’s family. In a satisfyingly plotted climax, the Masons and Mary come together to restore the ghost’s memory, allowing her to move on in the afterlife, thus saving both the marriage and Elsie’s life—for Elsie, we find out, has suppressed the memory of her best friend’s suicide and is headed that way, too—good deeds that were the purpose of the visitation.
A clever, engaging diversion with just enough substance to chew on.Pub Date: July 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-46235-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
A very aptly titled gripper (received too late for a full review) that will have Grisham slapping his wife’s wrist in pique over the breakfast toast when he discovers Meltzer’s plot for his second novel (The Tenth Justice, 1997). Attorney Jared Lynch’s Manhattan firm takes on the defense of a psychopath and hands the case over to Jared, who soon finds that he’ll die if he loses this case. Meanwhile, in the assistant district attorney’s office, Jared’s wife Sara has the same case passed down to her and a similar stricture applies: She’ll also die if she loses. And further, although prosecutor and defense attorney sleep together, the law forbids any trading of information between them, despite the lethal warnings that neither can tell the other about. To top all this off, author Meltzer is an attorney himself, which lends the novel’s dialogue a sparkling undercurrent of real-life chitchat, not to mention the mutual saber-sharpening that readers will quickly pick up on and enjoy as a bonus. (Author tour)
Pub Date: May 13, 1998
ISBN: 0-688-15090-X
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
Coben can always be relied on to generate thrills from the simplest premises, but his finest tales maintain a core of logic...
Another one of Coben’s got-it-all New Jersey dads finds out that his wonderful wife has been hiding a whopper of a secret from him—a secret whose trail leads to even more monstrous revelations.
“We’re living the dream,” Tripp Evans assures Adam Price at their sons’ sixth-grade lacrosse all-star team draft—lacrosse, for crying out loud. But the dream is already slipping from Adam’s grasp as Tripp speaks. Minutes earlier, a young stranger who declined to give his name had sidled up to Adam and informed him that his wife had faked her first pregnancy, which had supposedly ended in a miscarriage. When an agonized Adam confronts Corinne with the story, she doesn’t deny it. Instead, she pleads for more time and promises that she’ll tell all over a restaurant dinner the following day. Adam, who’s clearly never read anything by Coben (Missing You, 2014, etc.), agrees, and Corinne checks out of her high school teaching job and vanishes, pausing just long enough to text Adam: “YOU TAKE CARE OF THE KIDS. DON’T TRY TO CONTACT ME. IT WILL BE OKAY.” Days pass, and it’s not OK. Adam’s two boys (are they really even his? should he run DNA tests?) keep asking where their mom is. There’s no word from Corinne, who won’t answer Adam’s texts. Her cellphone places her somewhere near Pittsburgh. Rumors about her start to percolate through the lacrosse league. And, although it’ll take Adam quite a while to find this out, a murder in far-off Ohio has implications for Corinne’s disappearance even more disturbing than anything Adam’s imagined.
Coben can always be relied on to generate thrills from the simplest premises, but his finest tales maintain a core of logic throughout the twists. This 100-proof nightmare ranks among his most potent.Pub Date: March 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-95350-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
© 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.
