Phantom Effect
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
Jonathan Martin Delaware Deseronto is a six-foot-five serial killer with a problem. He’s stuck out on I-476 in a heavy November rainstorm with two flat tires and the dead bodies of a cop and a co-ed named Marissa Madison in his trunk. Desperate to get off the highway, he drives his car on its back rims towards Exit 6. The car stalls on the ramp and Deseronto uses the last of its momentum to plunge over the crest of a steep slope and crash into a length of concrete pipe below. The car comes to rest on the edge of a construction site where machines are positioned to tear down an old Motel 6.
For Deseronto, the worst is yet to come. Marissa Madison had been a psychic of sorts while alive, using her ability to assist people in their personal journeys. Now, the ghost of Marissa will utilize her strange gift, trapping Deseronto in the abandoned motel, and forcing him to live the last, fatal week of her own life as a passive passenger in her body . . . Soon, Deseronto will experience something truly horrific: the mind-numbing terror of being stalked by himself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Psychological obsession and surrealist complexity lend interest to fetishistic violence in a perverted parable that challenges traditional moral norms and reader expectations. When serial killer Jonathan Deseranto gets a flat tire, an unexpected encounter leads to an automobile accident that, in turn, reveals the animated corpse of Marissa Madison, his most recent victim. Cast into a purgatorial time loop and forced to inhabit Marissa's life as well as his own, Jonathan realizes his victim had "gifts he didn't know about." Reliving Marissa's domestic strife and enduring grim reunions with his abusive mother, Jonathan becomes both hunter and prey. Razor-sharp description, breakneck action, and sympathetic characters undermine the reader's preconceived notions of past and present, and of reality and delusion, in a thriller designed to question as much as entertain. The genre staple of a killer's psychosexual metamorphosis is invigorated by the theme of a fragmented identity haunting itself. Perspective shifts lend depth to a philosophically rich fearfest that's recommended for readers who prefer their titillation to include some complexity.
