Kirkus Reviews QR Code
THE BIRTHDAY MURDERER by Jay Bennett

THE BIRTHDAY MURDERER

By

Pub Date: Oct. 25th, 1977
Publisher: Delacorte

Is Shan O'Rourke cracking up from long-suppressed guilt or is his mother's new boyfriend/old acquaintance Paul Lambert playing cat-and-mouse as he prepares to murder Shan to avenge his own son's death? George Lambert was just seventeen, Shan five, when the older boy died in a fire that Shan was believed to have set; now Shan is seventeen and from his birthday on there are strange messages, sounds, appearances. . . and Lambert is back on the scene with his sinister ambiguities. Shan is in a rocky state, and he has a history of seeing his dead father watching him--but it's soon clear that Lambert is the real maniac and the question becomes whether he'll succeed. It's close enough to keep the psychological thriller fan on the edge of the couch.