Perfect Angel

Hypnotising her friends into forgetting the letters D and H, Julia Mallet is forced to bring them out of hypnosis without correcting the suggestion and is horrified when one of them turns out to be a serial killer. 35,000 first printing.

A high-concept, low-output Imperiled Mom scenario from the author of Losing Isaiah (1993), etc. Margolis starts with a nifty premise. Top advertising exec- -and aggressively single mom--Julia Mallet celebrates her 35th birthday by inviting six of her old college friends over and, at their insistence, taking them back to 1981 via another dose of the hypnosis she practiced like a parlor trick back in those days. But Julia's a little rusty; things get out of hand among her regressed buddies; and after they leave, she realizes she's forgotten to reverse the hypnotic suggestion she used to test the depth of the trances--that they each forget the letters D and H. Next day, a lunatic called The Wizard murders a woman from Julia's building, spray-painting a signature on the wall over her corpse: TE WIZAR. Obviously, the killer is one of Julia's old friends; their hypnotic regression must have shaken something bad loose from one of them. So now, instead of thinking of them just in terms of their shared past or their glamorpuss jobs (one's a cookbook author, another's a senator's aide, a third makes millions on the commodities floor; even the nonentities are a former valedictorian, a former pre-med, and a rolling-stone hustler), Julia has to wonder which of them has been hiding a lifelong secret. Margolis isn't much interested in developing any of the characters as suspects, much less bringing them to life; some of their personalities seem stuck in a single decade (the '70s type is trapped in a marriage with the '80s type). Instead he concentrates on the budding romance between Julia, whose controlling personality makes her like boxing better than sex, and her NYPD protector, almost-divorced Det. Ray Burgess, whose love life has never been what it might ever since his failure to stop a heinous sex killer from committing his last crime. Labored, thin, and amazingly unsuspenseful. (First printing of 35,000; film rights to Paramount) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Yes, it's another serial-killer thriller attempting to elbow its way into an already-overcrowded market. But Margolis mostly avoids the minigenre's tired formulas, adding some cleverly diabolic twists and producing a story that's likely to keep even disapproving readers riveted to the page. Successful advertising executive Julia Mallet celebrates her thirty-fifth birthday with six of her oldest friends. They persuade Julia to hypnotize them, just the way she did in college, but this time, the party trick turns tragic. A young mother who lives in Julia's building is shot to death, and a series of clues suggests that Julia's hypnosis has unleashed an alternative, serial-killer personality in one of the group. The ending is fairly predictable, but the route Margolis takes to get there is unique and frightening. A high-impact story packed with what thriller fans expect: suspense, romance, sex, glitz, glamour, and gore. Emily Melton

A harmless party game sends advertising executive and single mom Julia Mallet's perfectly ordered life into an out-of-control spiral in this breathtaking psychological thriller from Margolis (Losing Isaiah, Hyperion, 1993). At her 35th birthday party, Julia's six oldest friends convince her to hypnotize them for old times' sake. Julia agrees, and while they are under, she erases the letters "D" and "H" from their vocabularies and takes them back to their childhoods. But after she has brought them back to the present, she realizes that she has forgotten to restore the missing letters. When a killer strikes, leaving the cryptic message "Te wizar," only Julia recognizes the name as "The Wizard." The plot moves quickly as Julia realizes with horror that her hypnosis session has unleashed a long-buried childhood memory?a memory that has turned someone very close to her into a ruthless killer. A thoroughly chilling and engrossing story; for most popular collections.?Lori Dunn, Montgomery Cty. P.L., Troy, N.C.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.