You Can't Catch Me

Visiting Philadelphia where he learns of his disturbing likeness to a notorious businessman, Southern bachelor Tristram Heade is drawn into his double's world when he is made a tempting offer. 20,000 first printing. $10,000 ad/promo.

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.

Tristram Heade travels to Philadelphia to buy a rare book, and strange things begin happening. A train porter hands him a wallet, supposedly his, but inside is identification for an Angus Markham. On impulse, Heade registers at a hotel where he is greeted as Markham. Later, Markham's luggage arrives in his room. In the middle of the night, he is awakened by a beautiful woman come to beg his, or rather Markham's, protection from her rich, sadistic husband. Who is this Markham, and why is Heade starting to act as he believes Markham would? This is a tense psychological suspense novel filled with dual identities, double crosses, and duplicity. It is also filled with philosophical and literary allusions suggesting that this is less about the mystery of Markham than about the fragile mystery of identity. It's just what one would expect from the celebrated Joyce Carol Oates, who uses the pseudonym "Rosamond Smith" for her psychological thrillers. Highly recommended.
Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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