A standard come-to-realize, run-like-hell plot (consult your Collected Alfred Hitchcock), but Case, who writes so very well,...
Briskly paced thriller from Case (The Syndrome, 2001, etc.), with high-tech gadgetry, old-fashioned melodrama, and much ado about “gray goo.”
What’s gray goo? It’s the McGuffin, of course. Or, as one embattled scientist attempts to explain, “Well, it’s the end of the world. At least.” Flash back to young Danny Cray confronting a gift horse. Intuitively, he knows that this one should have its mouth inspected—thoroughly. And yet the money is so good. And so desperately needed. A part-time sculptor, part-time snooper who wants very much to be full-time the former, Danny has half a dozen wonderful uses for the fat fee he’s being offered for a little elementary p.i. work. Mostly, it will require a few hours of computer jockeying, stuff he’s a natural at. So he says yes to the insouciant Jude Belzer, who later turns out to be billionaire Zerevan Zebek, whom some—not without cause—believe to be the devil.. Still, at first, the guy and the gig truly did seem a no-sweat deal. Someone’s been trashing a major client, lawyer Belzer informs Danny, and if the who and why of that could be nailed down, Belzer would take it from there. Danny does his part, is duly compensated, but is then asked to burrow a tiny bit deeper—for an add-on fee about which nothing at all is tiny. Charmed by his slick and elegant employer into further self delusion, Danny soon finds himself in Italy (Rome, Siena) on a heady whirl, first-class to his eyeteeth. Inevitably, though, there’s an awakening, and, having discovered the dangerous nature of Belzer’s megalomania, Danny has to run for his life, Belzer’s ill-disposed “bulky boys” in hot pursuit.
A standard come-to-realize, run-like-hell plot (consult your Collected Alfred Hitchcock), but Case, who writes so very well, keeps it all at a merry boil.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-43309-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
Twisty and propulsive.
A first date takes a sinister turn for a troubled young woman in Walker’s third psychological thriller.
It’s the day after Laura Lochner’s date with a man she met online, and she hasn’t returned to the Connecticut home of her sister, Rosie, her brother-in-law, Joe, and their little boy, Mason, where she’s been staying after a bad breakup. Rosie fears the worst, but Joe advises caution. After all, Laura is an adult and can have some fun, right? But Rosie has a bad feeling. Laura won’t answer her phone, and Rosie only has more questions after poking around online for info on Laura’s date, Jonathan Fields. Rosie eventually calls the police, and events begin to cascade like dominoes. Interspersed with Rosie’s attempt to trace Laura’s movements and get a handle on the guy she went out with is Laura’s first-person account of the actual date as well as enlightening snippets of sessions between Laura and her therapist. Laura’s is the most compelling part—a tormented, often prickly piece of storytelling by a woman carrying the pain of a horrible event that happened in high school and feelings of abandonment by a father who always seemed to love Rosie more. Laura’s desire to be loved is all-consuming, but her conviction that she is not worthy of love is heartbreaking. She sees subterfuge in nearly everything Jonathan says and does. Meanwhile, Rosie must come to terms with some ugly surprises of her own as she digs into their past. As the timelines inevitably converge, Walker’s clever misdirection paves the way to a truly chilling finale, and she has plenty of insightful things to say about the blame placed on women by society and themselves for the idiotic, careless, and sometimes downright evil things men do.
Twisty and propulsive.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-19867-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
An engrossing and haunting psychological thriller.
A young newlywed's life is upended, and a picturesque neighborhood is shattered, when she is suspected of a savage murder.
At the beginning of a new year, Joey Mullen moves back to England from Ibiza with Alfie, her husband, whom she hastily married out of grief over the death of her mother. Jack, Joey’s older brother, invites the young couple to move into his painted Victorian house in the upscale Bristol neighborhood of Melville Heights so they can get on their feet financially and help with the baby that Jack and his wife, Rebecca, are expecting. Joey quickly becomes infatuated with their neighbor Tom Fitzwilliam, a new headmaster charged with improving the local school. Her crush only intensifies when Alfie suggests having a baby, and Joey begins to suspect her marriage was a mistake. Meanwhile, Tom’s wife, Nicola, struggles to fill her days and remains oblivious to their son, Freddie, who regularly spies on his neighbors and the village's teenage schoolgirls, taking their photos and keeping a detailed log of everyone's activities. This surveillance exacerbates the paranoia and mental illness of another neighbor, the mother of 16-year-old Jenna, one of Tom’s students. Jenna’s mother is convinced that she knows the Fitzwilliam family from a vacation incident years earlier (and that the family is now stalking her), but Jenna is more concerned that Tom may be having an inappropriate relationship with her best friend. After several months, tension in the neighborhood explodes, and Joey is suspected of a brutal murder. However, as the police gather evidence, it becomes clear how many secrets each family has been hiding. Jewell (Then She Was Gone, 2017, etc.) adeptly weaves together a complex array of characters in her latest thriller. The novel opens with the murder investigation and deftly maintains its intensity and brisk pace even as the story moves through different moments in time over the previous three months. Jewell’s use of third-person narration allows her to explore each family’s anxieties and sorrows, which ultimately makes this novel’s ending all the more unsettling.
An engrossing and haunting psychological thriller.Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9007-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
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