Red, Red Robin - Hardcover

Gallagher, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345386442 ISBN 13: 9780345386441

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1995

Synopsis

"If thriller-reading were a sin, Stephen Gallagher would be responsible for my ultimate damnation. His work is fast-paced, well-written, infused with a sense of dark wonder, and altogether fresh."
--Dean R. Koontz
Though Tim Hagan appears wistful and sweet, beneath his polite veneer and boyishly handsome face lies a rage as deep as the ocean, and a conflict as sharp as a dagger. He needs a woman to save him from his gruesome past--and those who fail will simply become part of it.
Usually decisive and in command, thirty-something Ruth Lasseter finds herself on shaky ground. In order to mask an office affair, she must bring an escort to the company dance--someone who can play the part of paramour with convincing precision. Finally she makes her choice: Tim Hagan seems a suitable young man.
The darkness torn from that single night will consume Ruth with a need for vengeance and strip her life to the bone.
For Ruth escapes the hellish fate Hagan planned for her, only to become obsessed to know his tortured soul. So she looks for him, delving into his grisly history...traveling back to his birth near the primordial swamps of Louisiana...charting his descent, and hers, into personal hell...searching for anything that will help answer the many piercing questions lodged like thorns in her mind.
But as Ruth penetrates the very heart of madness, she finds herself irrevocably locked in a chilling dance to the death.
Bestselling author Elizabeth George hailed Stephen Gallagher's Nightmare, with Angel, calling it "a world-class, first-rate novel." Now, with Red, Red Robin, Gallagher once again delivers a taut thriller that is a masterpiece of suspense, right up to its shocking conclusion.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen Gallagher is the award-winning author of fifteen novels including Valley of Lights, Down River, Rain, and Nightmare, With Angel. He's the creator of Sebastian Becker, Special Investigator to the Lord Chancellor's Visitor in Lunacy, in a series of novels that includes The Kingdom of Bones, The Bedlam Detective, and The Authentic William James.

From Publishers Weekly

British writer Gallagher (Nightmare, with Angel) has written a smashing serial-killer thriller that embraces all the conventions of the genre while adding several page-turning twists and subtexts of its own. When, in order to protect her married lover, Ruth Lasseter uses an escort service to employ a companion, Tim Hagan, for a company event, it comes as no surprise to the reader that the hired help turns out to be serious trouble. But Ruth isn't your standard damsel in distress. She's a resident British alien working for a Philadelphia publisher, emotionally stressed enough to discuss her plans with her imaginary child but strong enough to flaunt her too-young escort in a corporate setting. Even after the Hagan reveals his true nature and she and security guard Aidan Kincannon foil his plans for her in a struggle that leads to the madman's presumed death, Ruth continues to be haunted by the young man, and delves into his past. As she discovers, Hagan may not be dead, and may not be the man everyone assumes him to be. And, as she uncovers the macabre and unsettling story of his childhood, Ruth finds herself pushing away Aidan and anyone else who might help her regain her emotional equilibrium. The final, inevitable showdown between a killer driven by inescapable demons and a woman who seeks understanding as much as revenge proves as powerful as the promise that Gallagher has built up, page upon gripping page of this compelling, unusually sensitive chiller. Mystery Guild and Doubleday Book Club selections; Literary Guild alternate.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0345386442
• ISBN 13: 9780345386441
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 378