This novel is graced by a cover of lurid hues. The flare of the match snags the eye and it takes a moment before you see its relationship to the title. This visual pun may be clever but does nothing to abate the uneasy stirred by the red and black surrounding the image.
Stories of serial killers exert a terrible fascination for certain readers. Their twisted psyches, their cunning attempts to escape detection, the subtlety and care with which they select their victims, the arrangement of the crime scene—they combine utter ruthlessness with an attention to detail you associate with skilled artisans like bakers and architects. Whether fictional or actual, they remain grim parts of the so-called civilized world.
But what happens when a victim survives an attack? Then the story shifts, the attention given to people picking themselves up in the wreck of their lives. Existence is divided into Before and After, a sharp line demarcating a normal world in which such things don’t happen and the horror of a life where everyone else carries on as if monsters weren’t lurking beneath the surface of their sunlit world.
Such is the stained reality Mr. North offers us. Christopher suffers because of his sister’s selfish neglect and Katie carries the burden of that guilt, a suffering almost as great as her brother’s. She is left with the usual questions of what she could have done differently, how she could have prevented the tragedy. Would her presence have saved her brother or would she have wound up being the victim?
In the beginning, we are placed in the sunlit world as two normal healthy kids gossip and chatter. We are taken through the adolescent Katie’s thoughts as she worries about losing her boyfriend, her parents’s real or imagined neglect or interference, her brother’s neediness.
We are left in the dark about the source of Christopher’s withdrawal. Is he autistic, moody or simply deeply shy? Whatever the case, Katie sees him as being different and so do her parents. Do they really treat their son with more attention than Katie or is it all the warped imaginings of a teenager who can’t help but view the world through the lens of adolescent yearning and resentment? Is Chris really a burden or does Katie define him as such because he’s spoiling her sexy time?
The story takes a turn for the supernatural when we get hints that Katie’s daughter may not be all that she appears. But we are cut off, left at a dangling cliffhanger, just as matters get really interesting.
Where will our killer strike next? And what part does Katie play? If you’re a fan of the bloody whodunnit, Mr. North invites you into the dark room where someone is waiting…
Stories of serial killers exert a terrible fascination for certain readers. Their twisted psyches, their cunning attempts to escape detection, the subtlety and care with which they select their victims, the arrangement of the crime scene—they combine utter ruthlessness with an attention to detail you associate with skilled artisans like bakers and architects. Whether fictional or actual, they remain grim parts of the so-called civilized world.
But what happens when a victim survives an attack? Then the story shifts, the attention given to people picking themselves up in the wreck of their lives. Existence is divided into Before and After, a sharp line demarcating a normal world in which such things don’t happen and the horror of a life where everyone else carries on as if monsters weren’t lurking beneath the surface of their sunlit world.
Such is the stained reality Mr. North offers us. Christopher suffers because of his sister’s selfish neglect and Katie carries the burden of that guilt, a suffering almost as great as her brother’s. She is left with the usual questions of what she could have done differently, how she could have prevented the tragedy. Would her presence have saved her brother or would she have wound up being the victim?
In the beginning, we are placed in the sunlit world as two normal healthy kids gossip and chatter. We are taken through the adolescent Katie’s thoughts as she worries about losing her boyfriend, her parents’s real or imagined neglect or interference, her brother’s neediness.
We are left in the dark about the source of Christopher’s withdrawal. Is he autistic, moody or simply deeply shy? Whatever the case, Katie sees him as being different and so do her parents. Do they really treat their son with more attention than Katie or is it all the warped imaginings of a teenager who can’t help but view the world through the lens of adolescent yearning and resentment? Is Chris really a burden or does Katie define him as such because he’s spoiling her sexy time?
The story takes a turn for the supernatural when we get hints that Katie’s daughter may not be all that she appears. But we are cut off, left at a dangling cliffhanger, just as matters get really interesting.
Where will our killer strike next? And what part does Katie play? If you’re a fan of the bloody whodunnit, Mr. North invites you into the dark room where someone is waiting…