all time favorite thriller about a psychotic genius, I recently read it for the second time, hace aproximadamenteaños Read in, Psychological thriller. slightly above average thriller a tad too Silence of the Lambs but it does what it does very well This is one of the best and most original thrillers Ive read in some time.
Some of the reviews when it was published incompared it to Silence of the Lambs, which is entirely misleading, The two main characters around whom the story revolves are Bill Kaiser, who may or may not be insane, depending on your criteria and your politics, and Sharon Blautner, a psychiatric ER nurse at Bellevue, who has survived too many tragedies and whose mental stability is also problematic.
We meet Bill as hes breaking into the apartment of a U, S. Senator whos in the pocket of Edward Mackinnon, a multimillionaire property developer who intends to tear down a Lower East Side architectural landmark and replace it with a forprofit prison.
Hes planning to follow that with more prisons in all the boroughs, and then the rest of the country awaits, Bill plants a plastique bomb in the senators computer, but then the cops show up and he gives them a performance to ensure they take him to the psychiatric prison ward at Bellevue.
Enter Sharon, a talented almostshrink whose father committed suicide and who then lost her husband and toddler son in a traffic accident, and now is just barely hanging on.
Shes terrific with the patients, though, and she loves her job, and that keeps her sane, And now theres this new guy who seems much more intelligent than most, Could he be faking his symptoms to stay out of jail
As you can guess, thats just the beginning, Events will attach Bill and Sharon closely to each other, Bill has a political agenda and the technical talents and skills to carry it out, Sharon wants to protect both him and the people he has targeted except that she has no reason to want to save Mackinnon, who once was her fathers partner.
Bill has deep ties to the structure of New York and knows the city very well, And even though he makes some very questionable decisions, hes a sympathetic character, But its Sharon the reader roots for as she tries to save both Bill and Mackinnon from themselves, Even though its unlikely she would turn out to be a more proficient investigator than the FBI, as happens several times,
I picked up this book used, and its physically a bit odd, having been published apparently without a jacket and displaying absolutely no author information.
I can find no indication of any other books Hall may have written, either, There are a lot of “Matthew Halls” out there, Was this a oneoff I hope not, While its just a bit overwritten in places, and while the political points the author wants to make tend to be pushed in the readers face, the overall result is a very exciting, very cinematic yarn.
A genius psychotic criminal fighting for social justice, A very common storyline, just like watching a hollywood movie, Αστυνομικό γρήγορο με σασπένς περνάς καλά μαζί του χωρίς παραπάνω απαιτήσεις ,καλό για ΜΜΜ και παραλία. Η πόλη της Νέας Υόρκης και η αγάπη προς αυτή διατρέχει όλο το βιβλίο. Ωραίες εικόνες, θα γινόταν μια πολύ καλή ταινία ίσως καλύτερη και από το βιβλίο στα χέρια ενός καλού σκηνοθέτη. Exciting suspense/thriller. Just exactly who is the bad guy in this Well, we know but Hall blurs the boundaries to make us wonder, I like the heroine caught up in the mess and I long to know if there is a follow up book, Why do I want the villain and heroine to get together One intense hero or villain, . you decide. A criminal with a socially progressive mindset Interesting, He does some scary things, . the opening scene! But you are pulled in right away to see what he is really all about,
I finished this book with many questions, . . is this about despair The heroine has understandable loss, the antihero Hmmm,
And there is a tryst scene in KFMU's radio studio that involved a physical act I've been very curious about, . I cant say exactly when I read this the first time, but it must have been sometime close to thedate of publication, I clearly remember liking it and recommending it to anyone who would listen, but I could only vaguely recall the main beats and almost none of the details.
I eventually picked up a copy of my own, always intending to read it again, but never getting around to it, Now, after so much time has passed, I was equal parts eager to reengage with the story and curious to see if it held up, the latter because I feel like Ive grown a little more discerning over the ensuing years.
One of the things that worked for me then and now was the originality of Bill Kaiser, one of the two central characters, Calling him a central character is a hedge, as he lands somewhere between protagonist and antagonist, and you know right off the bat that theres more to him than meets the eye.
Hes in a NY highrise, competently working his way through some sophisticated breaking and entering, when he ends up arrested for trespassing on private property, fully naked and bloody, with selfinflicted wounds and threatening further selfharm.
Instead of jail, hes taken to Bellevue, where he presents as a fullblown schizophrenic,
This is where we meet Sharon Blautner, an ER nurse with some heavy personal baggage who happens to catch Bills intake, and who is tasked with helping to assess his mental state and his readiness to face charges.
Sharon has no doubt that Bill has some measure of mental illness, but also sees that he can be thoughtful, reasonable, and caring, Unfortunately for her, the aforementioned baggage has left Sharons baddudemeter hopelessly offline, which Bill quickly exploits, Their encounter knocks her world off its axis, and Sharon is left unable to escape Bills orbit even when she wants to,
I really enjoyed the authors approach, Even though this book had the DNA of a conventional thriller, there was some investigating and a pursuit, the narrative wasnt driven by a cop or a copsurrogate, which was refreshing.
All of the main characters were shaded, and not strictly black and white, My only complaints were that Sharons actions in the backhalf of the book were occasionally irrational, while Bill was so übercapable it defied belief, His backup plans had backup plans, which had more had backup plans, which made it seem that he could manage the most intricate and elaborate of machinations without a hiccup.
Three and a half, rounded up for not having been a total disappointment upon rereading,
As a postscript, I always wondered what ever happened to sitelinkMatthew Hall after this was published, assuming that was not a pseudonym, There are multiple works published by authors bearing this name, but unless he jumped genres and continents, this appears to have been the last published work by this Matthew Hall.
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