Unevenly paced, stomach-churning psychological horror not for the faint of heart.
After an accident, a young man starts to have violent and twisted thoughts.
Melvin Frink is a neuropsych student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore with an obsessive interest in the science of lobotomy, hoping to research the procedure and bring it back to the forefront of psychological treatment. With a seemingly meek and nerdy disposition, Melvin has an abusive, controlling, rich mother who keeps him on a short leash, but he wants to get away one day. His hopes are dashed when after a freak accident, he spends three years in a coma and wakes up to find himself trapped and still under his mother’s control. As his mind struggles to adapt, Clark’s protagonist begins to have violent urges toward women and especially his mother. As he regains control of his body and mind, he concocts a plan that will ensure that his mother and other women will never again humiliate or control him. The plan involves an operating table and cages in the basement of his family’s mansion, a place that used to hold a crematory and that will be where he keeps the girls he intends to kidnap quiet and subservient. But Melvin didn’t count on a campus police force willing to go the extra mile to track down girls who have recently gone missing or that he would find the perfect, willing victim in the most unexpected place. An omniscient narrator follows these and other characters in a twisted, dark psychological terror story. Full of graphic sexual and physical violence that at times crosses the line into gratuitous imagery, the story focuses primarily on Melvin, his tormented life, and the violence he inflicts on others. Both victim and perpetrator, he embodies a cycle of psychopathic abuse at the intersection of nurture and nature. The uneven pacing—slow at first, especially when describing the torture of the female victims, but rushed toward the end—further limits the appeal of a grisly tale.
Unevenly paced, stomach-churning psychological horror not for the faint of heart.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2021
ISBN: 979-8779134583
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.
More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.
In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to the case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new investigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come.
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063336773
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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