This book was special to me, not because it had great characters or plot, but because it was the first book I read using reading glasses. A few weeks ago I admitted to myself that my reading time had been greatly reduced because it was no longer a pleasure. Too much squinting, too much eye strain. So I got a pair of reading glasses. I am still getting used to them and they are not perfect, but I can now, once again, read for hours and enjoy it.
The book. Pretty good, judging by how easily it grabbed me and hung on to the end. The story was a bit of a stretch on the believability scale, but it had some surprises and kept me guessing to the end.
Jeffery Deaver is mostly noted for his Lincoln Rhyme series of mysteries which I love. This is not one of them. The protagonist in this one is Tate Collier, a divorced lawyer, former prosecutor and father of 12-year-old Megan McCall. Poor Megan has a number of issues – including the divorce and some deep-seated anger toward her father – for which she is getting therapy. The book begins with Megan talking to a substitute therapist (her regular therapist had family issues to address) who ends the session by kidnapping her. Because he isn’t a therapist at all but a psychopath of the first order.
The faux therapist, at various stages in the book, also passes himself off as a police investigator and an FBI agent. He is skilled at reading people and telling them what they want to hear. He then seduces them, kills them and/or compromises them in some way to make them useless as witnesses. He might be fun at a party, but don’t go home with him.
The heart of the book deals with Megan struggling to escape from her prison – an abandoned mental health hospital – and her parents’ effort to find her and to convince authorities that she has been kidnapped.
I won’t spoil the ending other than to say that Megan survives and the villain doesn’t. Not a great surprise there, but it is a fun read finding out how it comes about. The incredulity of some of the plot spoils it a bit, but it is still fun.
7.5 out of 10.