The Neighbors - Hardcover

Smith, Carol

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446522414 ISBN 13: 9780446522410

Publisher: Warner Books, 1999

Synopsis

What bold new terrain of suspense lies one ingenious step beyond Hitchcock's masterpiece Rear Window? Acclaimed author Carol Smith may have the answer in her latest tour de force... THE NEIGHBORS.

The striking, sprawling Victorian building dominates the fashionable London street. During one lonely Christmas season, Kensington Court welcomes a new resident: Kate Ashenberry, in flight from an uncaring family and a broken love affair.

In its dark hallways Kate will meet an odd assortment of neighbors: irrepressible Ronnie and Rowena Barclay-Davenport; high-stepping Miles Burdett and his ambitious wife, Claudia; exotic Eleni Papadopoulos from across the hall; acid-tongued dowager Mrs. Adelaide Potter; eligible heartthrob Gregory Hansen; and free-spirited actress Connie Boyle. Some encounters will blossom into friendships; others will grow more menacing than a brush with a stranger ever could be.

One potential neighbor has escaped Kate's acquaintance, for journalist Guy Bartlett had tumbled to his death shortly before her arrival. Some tenants say his mysterious five-story fall a continent away was the most exciting story to touch their lives in years. But after Kate moves in, more residents of Kensington Court die, each more horribly than the last...and each bafflingly murdered behind a door locked securely from the inside. Trust between neighbors evaporates. Kate fears her name is climbing higher on the killer's list of victims. And always, across the courtyard at one rear window, a lone, unmarked watcher stands vigil....

This is Carol Smith at the height of her gifts, weaving a story of relationships and a tale of mystery with her riveting, signature brilliance.

About this title

About the Author

CAROL SMITH is the author of the acclaimed novels Friends for Life and Charmed Circle.

Reviews

Smiths third hardcover (after Charmed Circle, 1998) mixes Hitchcock's Rear Window with Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, leaving out the baby but substituting for Manhattan's fabulously rococo Dakota the imposing Kensington Court, a block-square Victorian apartment building in London, where all the nasty will happen. British newspaper freelancer and story syndicator Kate Ashenberry gets the opportunity to move to London from her Argentine ex-boyfriends spacious Manhattan apartment and into the drab, saggy penthouse of late journalist Guy Bartlett, who was pushed (or perhaps just fell) out a fifth-floor window in Cairo. But who is The Watcher, the voyeur Kate often spots peering from a window into her neighbors lives? Since childhood Kate's been easily scared, not only by half-open doors and menacing monuments clustered together in the gathering dusk but even by Baby Jesus, whos been watching her ever since primary school. Fear of ghoulish older brother Bruno is hardly irrational, not when he leaves a dead mouse or dog's skull at the foot of her bed for her to awaken to, and who once even traded her to a schoolmate who pathetically admitted wanting to have a younger sister. Mums senile. Kates wimpish separated husband, psychopharmacologist Francis Pitt, now more mature, is a bit of a rising star in forensics. For Kate, life is a crow pickled with its feathers on. Then a series of violent deaths hits Kensington Court, first theres Guy in Cairo (he was pushed), then four women neighbors (so bloody, dismemberment), capped by the semi-strangulation and living burial in an oak casket, covered with heavy objects, of Kates best friend, whose mild-mannered lover, Gregory, then treats Kate to his tender cares. Hocus-focus on Kensington Court bolsters Smiths most intriguing thriller yet, although serial murderers today are common as cornflakes. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Warner Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0446522414
• ISBN 13: 9780446522410
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384