Suspense View All Entries »

This is a story about two little girls.  These are two very disturbed little girls.  And they really like to sing ABBA songs.  ABBA will never sound the same to me again.

 

Theres is found abandoned in the woods as a baby.   With no family to call her own, she is taken in by Lennart and Laila, two aging musicians.  Lennart and Laila almost made it big with several musical chart-toppers.  But as time went on, their fame faded.  But, their dreams of stardom never subdued.  Their only child, Jerry, spent considerable time in detention and jail as an adolescent and now works shady jobs, living on society's fringes.  He's never made his parents proud.  Now, Lennart and Laila focus on the new baby, in part to avoid their miserable marriage and failed relationship with Jerry.  Their parenting style made me shudder.

 

Circumstances prevent Lennart and Laila from continuing to foster Theres, and Jerry takes her into his custody.  She is an unusually quiet and disturbed child, with an extraordinary musical talent.  Her voice is unlike anything Jerry has heard, and he's determined to make some money off her talent.

 

Theresa grows up in a traditional family home, a train ride away from Theres.  She is uncomfortable in her own skin, unable to make friends or make sense of the world.  Her family is concerned for her depressed state.  But when Theresa sees Theres on a national singing competition, she feels a kinship she can't explain.  When the two girls meet, the chemistry is apparent.  Their friendship strikes a dangerous level and their combined effort at achieving success is petrifying.

 

This review is somewhat vague, as there are so many plot twists, I don't want any spoilers. 

 

I first came across Swedish author Lindqvist's "Let the Right One In", a modern twist on the traditional vampire plot.  That novel has been turned into horror films in both Sweden and the U.S.  His newest release, "Little Star", cements his ability to disturb and terrify.   This particular story has been compared to Stephen King's "Carrie", but I think his horror strikes a much more ominous note.

Imagine that you wake up one morning and look in the mirror to find you have aged 20 years, and have no memory of that time. Now imagine that this happens to you every single time you wake up. This is what life is like for Christine Lucas in Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson.

Christine had a traumatic experience that left her with a very rare form of amnesia. She not only can't remember her past (with the exception of fragments from childhood and her early twenties), but she also cannot form new memories. Each time she goes to sleep, her brain erases whatever memories she formed during the day. Christine wakes up every morning not knowing who or where she is, or who is lying in the bed beside her. On one such day, Christine receives a phone call from a man claiming to be her doctor. He tells her where she can find a hidden journal that she has apparently been keeping. She opens the cover to see the words "Don't trust Ben" scrawled across the page. Ben is her husband. He just spent the morning explaining to her who she is and what happened to her to make her like this. And now she has been warned against him in her own handwriting.

Christine faces the seemingly impossible task of trying to uncover the truth about her past, who she is, and what happened to her. Lies, deception, and confusion fill her every waking moment. That is, at least, before she goes to sleep.

Already a planned movie with Nicole Kidman, this page-turning psychological thriller from a promising new author will keep you reading and guessing along with Christine until the end.

The Bedlam Detective, by Stephen Gallagher

Sebastian Becker is on his way to the rural countryside outside London in order to interview wealthy Sir Owain Lancaster when he hears of a terrible tragedy.  Two young girls have been murdered on the moors nears Lancaster's estate and Lancaster has declared that he knows the dark forces that killed them.  They're the same evil powers that killed his wife and son in the Amazon jungle several years previously, on a scientific mission that failed disastrously.

Now Becker's tasks are doubled.  As a Special Investigator to the Masters of Lunacy, based in the infamous Bedlam hospital, he must continue to investigate Lancaster in order to determine if he's insane or still fit to run his own estate.  But in conjunction, Becker must also discover if Lancaster harmed the young girls, and what really happened on that tragic Amazon expedition.

This brooding thriller is set in 1912 England and peopled with complex characters struggling within their own dark secrets.  Sir Owain locks himself away in his manor house, haunted by his family's deaths and avoiding the scorn of his scientific colleagues.  Becker and his wife, a nurse, struggle with the penury that came with the decision to move from America to England in order to help their strange and difficult son.  And the citizens of tiny Arnmouth live with their own fears about the two slain girls and an earlier tragedy that befell their quiet community.

One thing I've noticed in my many years as a librarian is that people love survival stories.  The enduring popularity of titles like Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer or Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing make it clear that people can't get enough stories about the doomed fates of people crazy enough to do things like climb Mt. Everest or cross Antarctica.  In general terms, we understand that the ones who didn't survive perished because their bodies were pushed too far, but did you ever stop to wonder just what, exactly, what happening during those final moments before they died?  Last Breath: Cautionary Tales from the Limits of Human Endurance is a macabre but utterly fascinating book that examines the physiological and psychological things a person experiences as they push themselves to, and beyond, the absolute brink of what the human body can handle.

Author Peter Stark has a long history of adventure travel and journalistic sports writing, creating a perfect foundation for the collection of stories that illustrate what happens to the mind and body as they experience hypothermia, drowning, or heatstroke, to name just a few.  The chapters read like a short stories, but woven into each is a scientific narrative explaining what is happening to the mind and body as the odds of survival grow increasingly small.  The scenarios are realistic and believable, and it's far too easy to imagine yourself as one of the main characters:  a cross-country skier finds himself making a series of increasingly poor choices that become even more erratic as his temperature drops; a climber survives a fall, only to succumb to internal injuries; a snowboarder does everything he can to keep from panicking after being buried in an avalanche.  While not everyone survives in this book, some do - just barely.  The difference between them?  Sometimes it's knowledge and preparedness, but sometimes it's just plain luck.
 

Born To Die by Lisa Jackson

Dr. Kasey Lambert has returned to Grizzly Falls Montana to practice medicine. Leaving Seattle behind along with a failed marriage, she is happy to settle into her grandparent's old farmhouse outside of town. Life is moving along smoothly until two deaths make the news.

Shelly Bonaventure, a B movie actress dies in Hollywood in what appears to be a suicide. But there are certain aspects of her death that have the lead detective questioning that assumption. The second death is of a school teacher right in Grizzly Falls. She has fallen off a snowy mountain path while jogging. Her death looks like an accident until arsenic is found in her system.

Kasey is saddened by the deaths but would not have thought much more about them if it weren't for people remarking on how much Kasey looks like the two women. And when a new patient of Kasey's, who also looks very much like her, is killed when her van goes off the road into the river, Kasey is feeling very uneasy about living alone in a secluded house.

Trace O'Halleran, a good looking rancher and single father, meets Kasey when he brings his son into her clinic. He is attracted to Kasey, possibly because she looks remarkably like his ex-wife who has not been in contact with her son or Trace for months. Trace and Kasey discover they are both searching for answers about the women being killed and they join forces to find out what connects these women before the killer finds Kasey.

Lena lives in Syracuse. Her life revolves around familiar patterns and she is comfortable that way. She works as a fingerprint examiner and likes to be left "alone and unfussed-with". Mostly she works with her small piece of the crime, but there was that one time, with the Haverstraw case, when her ability to see the pattern was the break they needed and Lena was forced into the limelight. That was five years ago and she's managed to stay behind the scenes since then, until a distraught mother seeks her out, convinced that her baby's death was murder, not SIDS. Something about the case stays with Lena, and she can't seem to forget it and get on with her normal work.

It's winter in Syracuse, cold and dark and snowy. Lena can remember bits and pieces of her childhood in the jungle, before she was found and then went to live with Pia and Henry. They kept saying they would adopt her when they got all the papers together, but it never happened and Lena lives with knowing that she wasn't the daughter they really wanted. She has always wondered what happened to her birth parents, and maybe that is why she feels such a connection to the families that are losing their babies. There are too many to fit the normal pattern, and as Lena tries to put it all together, she begins to wonder if the deaths could really be murder, and how she fits into the picture.

This book has the same flowing, descriptive writing style of Diana Abu-Jaber's earlier books. It seems to meander along, but at some point you realize you're sitting on the edge of your seat, biting your nails. For an intriguing mystery with haunting atmosphere, read Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber.

M, I, crooked-letter, crooked-letter, I, crooked-letter, crooked-letter, I, humpback, humpback, I. That's how some students in the South were taught how to spell Mississippi.

Larry Ott and Silas Jones make an unlikely pair. Larry comes from a middle-class, white family, whereas Silas is poor and black. Regardless of their class and racial differences, they start a friendship in high school and enjoy spending hours exploring the woods together. Larry takes a neighborhood girl, Cindy Walker, on a date to the drive-in movies. When Cindy doesn't show up back at home, Larry is the prime suspect, even though there is no evidence and he never confessed to the crime. He is outcasted from the community anyways, and after high school, he ships off to the army for mechanical training.

After high school, Silas, a skilled athlete, finds himself on scholarship to university.

Both boys return to their small town as men. Larry as a loner mechanic, still perceived as "Scary Larry," evenafter all those years away. Silas has joined the police force, and keeps busy with local crime.

Another girl disappears, and her vanishing will bring these old friends back together in ways neither expected.

Rogue Island by Bruce DeSilva

An arsonist is setting the Mount Hope neighborhood of Providence Rhode Island ablaze. Everyone in the neighborhood is on edge, afraid their house or business will be the next to go up in flames. Liam Mulligan is a newspaper journalist and he was raised in Mount Hope. His friends are dying in the fires and he is taking it personally. Launching an investigation, Mulligan discovers corruption and cover-ups but not the truth. His editor orders him to stop investigating the fires and assigns him to a dog story but Mulligan stubbornly persists in his inquiries. He's threatened, beaten and betrayed. He's suspended from the newspaper. He's even arrested for setting the fires.

Mulligan is brash and streetwise with a wicked sense of humor. The other characters are well developed and distinct. The tension is high, the pace is fast and Mulligan has to gamble on some very dangerous men to see that justice is done.

Bruce DeSilva worked for The Providence Journal and he understands the ends and outs of Rhode Island from the corruption and graft to the pot-holed streets. Rogue Island is hardboiled crime fiction for those who like it on the gritty side of the street.