You Can't Catch Me - Softcover

Smith, Rosamond

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451406826 ISBN 13: 9780451406828

Publisher: Onyx, 1996

Synopsis

Searching for a rare book in Philadelphia, genteel Southern bachelor Tristram Heade is confused when everyone mistakes him for notorious playboy Angus T. Markham, a situation that explodes when a beautiful woman approaches him with an irresistible offer. Reprint.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Even readers unaware that Smith (Soul/Mate) is the pseudonymous Joyce Carol Oates will note that this ingenious, seductive tale of murder and madness boasts a seasoned literary sensibility, beginning with its opening phrase: "Tristram Heade's tragic adventure began inauspiciously, and surely by chance...."). Tristram, a reclusive Virginia bachelor and antiquarian book collector, visits Philadelphia on business. There, his life takes a bizarre turn when he is mistaken by hotel personnel for shady gambler and real-estate speculator Angus T. Markham. Not only does Tristram find Markham's suitcase, clothes and dagger in his room, but he is soon visited by the tearful but exotic and lovely Fleur Grunwald, a black-clad mystery woman who also insists that Tristram is Markham-and her sometime lover. Enchanted, Tristram decides to play along and assumes the identity of Markham, with fatal results. To his astonishment, Fleur soon reveals herself as a split personality, with her alter ego, Zoe, emerging through a "low, throaty, singsong, seductive voice" to describe the alleged tortures of Fleur's sadistic husband, Otto, a philanthropist and misogynist whose abuses include the inscribing into Zoe's flesh of a byzantine maze of grotesque tattoos. His sense of justice inflamed, Tristram determines to free Zoe/Fleur from her sufferings by killing Otto. The plot, strewn with twists and corpses, is also laden with coincidences and symbolic devices that create an air of artifice. Nevertheless, Smith/Oates has written yet another novel that will keep readers awake through the wee hours, and guessing until the last page. BOMC and QPB selection.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

It's been said before, and bears repeating, that Joyce Carol Oates' psychological thrillers (written under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith) aren't as convincing as those of the master, Ruth Rendell. You Can't Catch Me is further proof. Thirty-five, single, born into a distinguished Virginia family, Tristram Heade travels by train to Philadelphia to keep an appointment with a rare-book dealer. Upon departing the Philadelphia station, Tristram undergoes the equivalent of Alice stepping through the looking glass: in his case, entering a world in which his identity is mistaken. Not only does the hotel staff believe him to be one Angus Markham, Tristram finds himself in possession of some of Markham's belongings. Tristram soon takes on not only the accoutrements of Markham's life, but his personality as well. When it comes to taking on Markham's girlfriend and her marital and personality problems, to which he willingly assents, Tristram is soon adrift on the high seas of conspiracy to murder. Trouble is, the reader faces difficulty believing this transformation; Smith/Oates hasn't the magician's flair of a Rendell--readers won't fully accept this rather incredible situation. Still, on a surface level, the narrative never stalls, and the Oates-as-Smith angle will draw many thriller readers. Brad Hooper

About this edition

• Publisher: Onyx
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0451406826
• ISBN 13: 9780451406828
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304