An enthralling and unnerving probe into the complex mind of a murderer.
In this thriller, a desperate author agrees to write the story of an enigmatic, self-professed serial killer.
Rick Philips’ days of being a famous author may be behind him. It’s been more than a decade since he released the bestselling Shelter in Place, in which he recounts his experience as the sole survivor of a high school shooting. He now teaches writing at Dupont University. But the college’s dean implies that if Rick doesn’t soon produce something substantial, he’ll lose his job. As it happens, Rick has already found a topic for his next book: a female serial killer. Or rather, she found him. He and Harriet Bristol Wheeler met recently at a writers’ conference, where she admitted she is a serial murderer and told him she wants him to tell her story. He complies and begins regularly interviewing Harriet. She says she’s killed 12 individuals but insists they aren’t victims, as they were all “bad people.” To allay any doubts Rick may have, Harriet takes him to a dumped body that she later IDs. Beyond that, she’s predominantly evasive: She reveals her history but only gradually names the others she’s murdered. Rick doesn’t immediately see the danger in his frequent proximity to a serial killer, but his life has been in turmoil for years, as he drinks excessively and has nightmares of Ian Maynard Abbot, the school shooter who nearly killed him. It may not be long before Harriet, who’s both clever and unpredictable, becomes the “monster” Rick fears the most. Peters’ (The Complete Collection of Short Stories, 2019, etc.) evenly paced novel is a riveting look at a serial killer, even if only in glimpses. Despite Harriet’s openness in detailing certain murders, she’s shrouded in mystery. Harriet isn’t her real name, and she cryptically tells Rick that, while she’s killed some, others have “just happened to die around” her. Rick also has a somewhat murky background. But this slowly comes to light through interactions with two strong female characters: Paige Turner, his first ex-wife, with whom he’s still on good terms; and Samantha Taylor, a neighbor, Dupont graduate student, and potential love interest. Though Rick and Harriet often assert that she’s a cunning murderer who doesn’t fit serial killer profiles, it’s not clear how she’s eluded detection for so long. For example, most scenes show Harriet killing someone with little to no planning and no indication she took precautions to avoid leaving evidence behind. Still, Harriet is an endlessly intriguing character. Rick sometimes sees “coldness” in her eyes or lack of emotion, but she easily charms people. What she’s thinking or feeling is nearly impossible to determine, and readers may wonder how much of what she’s relaying to Rick is true. The author generates a modicum of sympathy for Harriet, who supposedly has an inoperable brain lesion and a daughter whom someone took from her. Rick, meanwhile, makes a disturbing request of Harriet, which plays out in a twisty final act and open ending.
An enthralling and unnerving probe into the complex mind of a murderer.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73308-831-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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