Dialogues
A Novel of Suspense
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
In this electrifying debut, Stephen Spignesi reinvents the psychological thriller with a chilling tale of mounting intensity. Ingeniously crafted and crackling with suspense, here is a puzzle within a puzzle, at the center of which stands a hauntingly enigmatic young woman whose story will challenge everything you think you know....
Six people have been murdered in the animal shelter in which they worked. One unlikely woman stands accused of the crimes. Her name is Victoria Troy, and she is the most improbable of cold-blooded killers. A lover of animals, petite, brainy, and gifted with a sharp sense of humor, she too worked in the shelter, in an anguishingly difficult job. What could possibly have provoked her to murder six of her own coworkers–some of whom were her friends.
Who is Tory Troy? It is up to Dr. Baraku Bexley to find out. An astute psychiatrist hired by the court to determine whether Tory is mentally competent to stand trial, Bexley must explore her complicated background and her unusual convictions as he interviews her in the Connecticut psychiatric hospital in which she is confined–and also talks to others who have known her.
What Bexley learns about this gifted young woman comes almost solely from these interviews…but is that enough to explain the divide between the person Tory seems to be and the terrible crimes she’s accused of committing? Others find her difficult to fathom too: her lawyer, her nurse at the hospital, her mother, one of her former teachers; but all seek the same objective, to learn the truth no matter where it leads–or what secrets it may reveal about Tory, about the nature of evil, about us all.
Fiercely engaging and morally provocative, DIALOGUES is a rush of adrenaline that will keep you riveted from the first page to the last, a novel that will leave readers deeply shaken–and deeply moved.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Veteran anthologist Spignesi (Catastrophe! the 100 Greatest Disasters of All Time; The Essential Stephen King; etc.) makes his novel debut with this engrossing yet ultimately unsatisfying examination of a woman's transformation from sanctioned killer to murderer. Victoria "Tory" Troy is a euthanasia technician at a shelter in Connecticut whose primary job is to kill unclaimed animals every Friday in the facility's gas chamber. One Friday, instead of killing lost and unwanted pets, she contrives to inject her six co-workers with a paralyzing drug, then gases them to death. What follows is an often fascinating narrative carried out in dialogue form as Tory's case progresses through the judicial system. The first half of the book consists largely of interview sessions where a state-appointed psychiatrist assesses Tory's mental state at the time of the murders. Glimpses of Tory's writings and flashbacks to her troubled childhood heighten the tension. The prosecution's case, the trial and the jury's deliberations dominate the second half, also all in dialogue. Some of the exchanges that Spignesi includes do little to advance the plot, yet many are spellbindingly crafted. In the end, resolution why did this woman do what she did? is not forthcoming, and the finale falls back on one of the most shameless devices fiction writers can employ.
