May 15, 2017
Did you ever daydream yourself the hero who foils a plot to murder the boss' daughter? The old man, shimmering with gratitude, naturally will make you his vice president. Roland Keene, the narrator of this chilly exercise in sociopathy, pushes the fantasy along by manipulating people into staging a crime that goes horribly wrong but still gives Keene what he sought: a reporter's post on a mighty Chicago newspaper. But he isn't finished. Before a few more chapters have gone by, Keene has outmaneuvered or flat-out betrayed his colleagues, and he's jetting the world as on-camera talent for a TV network. By now readers may sense they're watching a reboot of Patricia Highsmith's blandly evil Ripley. Same ceaseless scheming, revealed in the same oddly affectless monologues. Planning a death or considering lunch? Same tone. But Keene is haunted by something a mentor said: leave enough bodies, and one will come back to haunt you. The working out of that prophecy provides the creepy finale to this expertly done study of a reptile brain at work.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)