Cal Bradleys marriage to Marie is the stuff of romance. Then one night, a 19-year-old boy named Peter Blue goes on a rampage. Friendless and suicidal, Blue is sent to Bradley for treatment. For the patient, its a last chance at redemption. For the doctor, its the beginning of a journey into a world of fear, deception, and murder. Because somehow, Blues extraordinary inner life is linked to Cals reality. And in the mystery of the teenagers mind lies the key to a more terrible mystery: Marie Bradleys hidden past.
Adult/High School-Reading this story is somewhat like taking a wild elevator ride-an unsuspected sudden jolt changes everything. Cal Bradley, psychiatrist, knows his life approaches perfection: he runs a respected family mental-health clinic in the New England town in which he grew up and has financial security, three healthy children, and a beautiful wife he adores. True, his older sister committed suicide some years ago, and his wife won't talk about her past and never mentions her family. Still, life is good. Things change when Cal agrees to treat, gratis, a troubled 19-year-old boy who has beaten up his girlfriend and set fire to a local church. Peter Blue has attempted suicide and threatens to finish the job if he is taken to jail. Deserted by his father and raised by a drunken mother, the teen claims to commune directly with God. Things escalate once Cal spots his beloved wife with another man, finds she has emptied their bank account of $60,000, and catches her in denial and lies. Someone tries to run over their three-year-old, Cal is attacked, and, as the tension mounts, readers learn that both Peter and Marie have a connection to a malevolent personality. The protagonist's actions ring as true as they are troubling. This is a story that will stay with readers, who will know that Cal and Marie's troubles are only beginning as the story ends. The characters are vivid, the twists and turns are as imaginative and surprising as the writing is concise yet eloquent. Not only a page-turner, this book can also provoke some interesting moral discussions.
Carol DeAngelo, Kings Park Library, Burke, VACopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
The two Edgars Klavan owns testify to his excellence at thrillers. True Crime; Don't Say a Word; most recently, Hunting Down Amanda he has yet to write a disappointing novel. His newest, too, will please his fans, but it's not his strongest. Psychiatrist Cal Bradley has a perfect life: a great job as head of a psychiatric institute in the New England town his eminent family has called home for generations; two nice kids; and, most important, a wonderful marriage to sweet Marie. Then Peter Blue shows up. Peter, 19, from a poor family, has been arrested for setting fire to a church and for pulling a gun on a cop. A word from Cal's priest, who believes that Peter exhibits an eerie spiritual aura, convinces Cal to evaluate the boy. Cal learns that Peter is indeed intimately connected to God, but also that he harbors hidden, perhaps homicidal, anger, directed partly toward a malevolent stranger in town who one day Cal sees talking to Marie in the woods. But Marie denies the encounter and continues to lie to Cal even as he uncovers incriminating secrets about her past, and even as the stranger's corpse surfaces in a nearby lake. Who killed him? The plotting of this novel is less clever, and the suspense less intense, than in previous Klavans. Even so, the author makes expert use of first-person narration to bond the reader to Cal's suspicions, and then to his complicity in sin; strong supporting characters vivify the smalltown setting. And the book's spiritual slant is unusual, and welcome, in a thriller. This is a minor gem from a major talent, a book that every Klavan fan will want but that won't expand the author's already wide readership.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Klavan has a talent for creating characters so deeply human that his thrillers take on a quality that goes beyond cliffhanger plot twists and harrowing turns of fate. The man and wife of the title are happily married Cal and Marie Bradley, he a psychologist and she a loving mother to their three children. Their trouble begins when Peter Blue, an engaging but disturbed young man accused of arson and of assaulting a police officer, comes to Cal for treatment. As Cal becomes involved in Peter's case, it is soon apparent that there are odd, almost supernatural connections between Peter and Marie. Finally, Cal realizes that his whole married life has been built on a lie. As he did in Hunting Down Amanda (LJ 4/15/99), Klavan has written a thriller that goes far beyond a basic cat-and-mouse formula, reminiscent of Jonathan Kellerman at the top of his game. Recommended for all public library fiction collections. Rebecca House Stankowski, Purdue Univ., Calumet Lib., Hammond, IN
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
*Starred Review* Edgar Award-winning Klavan's knack for writing page-turning psychological thrillers has never been more evident. At the center of his latest is Cal Bradley, an even-tempered small-town psychiatrist who lucked into a wonderful marriage to the enchanting, God-fearing Marie, with whom he has three remarkable children. Marie, too, lucked out, for her past is unpleasant--and unspoken (Cal always thought it best not to delve). In spite of the seemingly idyllic nature of their lives, we know from the start that all is not perfect, as Cal's first-person narration begins with "a confession of sorts." Cal's new patient is Peter Blue, a young man who tried to burn down a church and pulled a gun on the police chief; at once, Cal senses that Peter is not your typical teenage punk. Instead, he's a gifted, insightful, intelligent, almost Jesus-like figure who is trying to figure out how to be a man. As Peter opens up, Cal feels an eerie connection to the young man, a bond linking himself, Cal's dead sister, and his beloved Marie. A reasonable man, Cal dismisses such connections as mere coincidence, but as the plot unwinds, the links become tighter still. Klavan expertly blends a mystical allegory into a fast-paced suspense novel. Superb genre-bending from a writer who keeps getting better.
Mary Frances WilkensCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
