The Scarred Man
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
A ghost story forces a man to confront the darkest secret of his past
Christmas is lonely for a man with no family, and Mike North is grateful when his boss invites him to spend the holiday at his cabin upstate. But as a blizzard descends and conversation dries up, Mike regrets leaving New York City. Only the arrival of Susannah, his boss's daughter, saves him from going mad with boredom. She is quick-witted and beautiful, a perfect antidote to snow-bound tedium, and he begins to fall in love. For Christmas night entertainment, Mike invents a ghost story. It goes all right until Susannah starts to scream.
Something in his half-baked melodrama about a Chicago serial killer haunted by a man with a scarred face has touched a nerve. Unknowingly, Mike described a scene that matches Susannah's nightmares. Soon, what had been a dream begins to intrude into reality. To understand her terror, Mike digs into his own memory, hoping to unearth the secret that gave birth to the scarred man.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Michael North terrifies a young student with a ghost story that soon frightens them both in this fast-paced but tame thriller. Invited to spend Christmas at the home of his boss, Carl McGill, Michael meets and falls for Carl's daughter Susannah. While his story about a scarred man is fictitious, Susannah's worst nightmares come to concern a killer with a scar. Someone tries to kill her later at college, and an answering-machine message from a self-proclaimed ``scarred man'' leads to an attempt on both Michael and Susannah's lives. Michael then remembers that his parents were murdered when he was five, and a scarred man dominates the sudden memory. Hiding with him at the time was a one-year-old girl, and it dawns upon the lovers that they may be siblings. Together they drive to Hickman, Ind., where Michael's parents were murdered, to learn the truth. Lawyer Howard Marks, who represents a retarded handyman still blamed for the killings, proves to Michael that the man was in fact framed. But who, then, is the scarred man? His identity is the best surprise mustered by Peterson (nom de plume of Andrew Klavan, A Shock to the System ), but it fails to offset others quite easily guessed. A playful style dilutes the impact of a novel already weakened by a dearth of suspense.
