has ALL you need!

A community for book lovers to create their own bookshelves, share and explore books.

Google Preview

• .

  • Heartsick

  • The real brilliance of this book is the fascinating, bizarre, and dysfunctional relationship between an evilly sadistic serial killer and the detective that was her last victim. The second story line of the search for "the after-school strangler" isn't nearly as riveting, but the raw exploration o ... Continue

    The real brilliance of this book is the fascinating, bizarre, and dysfunctional relationship between an evilly sadistic serial killer and the detective that was her last victim. The second story line of the search for "the after-school strangler" isn't nearly as riveting, but the raw exploration of Archie's fragile and bruised psyche and Gretchen's extreme cruelty goes a long way to make up for this oversight.

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― Readingrat said on Jul 2, 2008 about the Mass Market Paperback edition| Add your feedback

• .

  • 

  • I'll admit I was a little apprehensive before I read this book. Whilst I liked Silence Of The Lambs, I couldn't really see the serial killer inside, serial killer outside dynamic being fresh or original... but i was utterly wrong.

    I'll go out on a limb and suggest this book is better than sil ... Continue

    I'll admit I was a little apprehensive before I read this book. Whilst I liked Silence Of The Lambs, I couldn't really see the serial killer inside, serial killer outside dynamic being fresh or original... but i was utterly wrong.

    I'll go out on a limb and suggest this book is better than silence of the lambs - the sexual chemistry between Gretchen Lowell (the killer inside) and Archie (her surviving victim) twists things nicely, and their relationship is carefully built through a series of interleaving flashbacks that add to the story rather than contrive to "be different".

    A tensely plotted novel, each chapter adds intrigue, carefully layering the story up until the stinging climax, with all characters in some kind of mental anguish - nobody is perfect, everybody is damaged goods. Realistically painted every character is believable and by the end of the book I actually cared what happened to them, which doesn't happen often.

    The best testament to this novel is that the second has been finished and a third is in the works - these won't be cash ins, these will be continuations to an engrossing, disturbing and genuinely terrifying story.

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― Kieran Delaney said on Mar 28, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

Damaged Portland detective Archie Sheridan spent ten years tracking Gretchen Lowell, a beautiful serial killer, but in the end she was the one who caught him. Two years ago, Gretchen kidnapped Archie and tortured him for ten days, but instead of killing him, she mysteriously decided to let him go. She turned herself in, and now Gretchen has been locked away for the rest of her life, while Archie is in a prison of another kind---addicted to pain pills, unable to return to his old life, powerless to get those ten horrific days off his mind. Archie's a different person, his estranged wife says, and he knows she's right. He continues to visit Gretchen in prison once a week, saying that only he can get her to confess as to the whereabouts of more of her victims, but even he knows the truth---he can't stay away.When another killer begins snatching teenage girls off the streets of Portland, Archie has to pull himself together enough to lead the new task force investigating the murders. A hungry young newspaper reporter, Susan Ward, begins profiling Archie and the investigation, which sparks a deadly game between Archie, Susan, the new killer, and even Gretchen. They need to catch a killer, and maybe somehow then Archie can free himself from Gretchen, once and for all. Either way, Heartsick makes for one of the most extraordinary suspense debuts in recent memory.

• julyserial killerthrillerfiction2008My favorites