Kate Wilhelm
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Subjects -> Mystery & Thrillers -> Authors, A-Z -> ( W ) -> Wilhelm, Kate
Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10
Average rating: 4.0 of 5
Engaging, but not her best 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.
Wilhelm is an excellent writer, and a master of psychological suspense. This book is no exception. However, I found it a little less satisfying than her best; a couple of the characters didn't quite ring true.
The plot is one Wilhelm has used a couple of times before: an attractive and intelligent young person who is at loose ends as to what to do with herself, and not quite sure of her life's direction, winds up through chance circumstances in a small town where something is deeply wrong, and no one wants to talk about it.
That's part of the problem I had with this book, though; while in past books such as "Skeletons," the secret has had to do with the past and is hidden by an older generation, in this book, the problem is ongoing and yet people are still ignoring it. Teenage girls keep disappearing - and no one pursues them or suspects them of anything other than running away. While that might have been the case half a century ago, in these days of entire organizations built around missing children, and pictures of missing children on every milk carton, and TV shows about searching for missing people, it just didn't seem likely to me that in a single village, 5 or more teenage girls would disappear and no one would be raising a stink, not even their parents, until our protagonist appears. And that in a relatively small town, no one prior to her would have noticed the similarities between the girls, nor figured out what other things were going on right when the disappearances started.
It also seems unlikely to me that the kidnapper could be doing the kinds of things they are doing, and not have other abnormalities show up in their behavior or personalities, that no one else would ever think that there was anything odd or unusual in the way this person behaves or things they say. (I'm not giving away who it was; that's why I'm avoiding saying she or he.) I think that people who are this sick show signs of the sickness in more than one way and generally aren't able to completely compartmentalize their lives. It's one thing if the person is a loner and doesn't associate with their neighbors at all, so that no one ever talks to them much; it's different if the person has a regular job and talks to many people every day and goes to social events: some other sign that something is WRONG with this person would show up. So I found the characterization of this person a little unrealistic, and the behavior of the neighbors a bit unbelievable.
Nonetheless, it's a well-written story and lots of action for our heroine and her husband. And I know that many people like this kind of suspense and think that there ARE completely hidden monsters among us, and those people won't have the reservations I had about the realisticness of the villain.
Editorial Review:
Disappearances. Murder. The Price of Silence in a Small Town. In dire need of a job, Todd Fielding accepts the offer to work at The Brindle Times -- even if she has to move to the lackluster town of Brindle. As she settles into her new home, Todd is fully prepared to adapt to the boredom of small-town life, but her preconceptions of Brindle are completely shattered when a local girl disappears. Even more shocking to Todd is the town's sheer indifference to the incident. No one -- not ever the police -- appear particularly concerned.
When Todd looks deeper into the story, she discovers that five other girls have "run away" from Brindle under strange circumstances over the past twenty years. As she sets out to uncover the history of a town that has cloaked itself in secrecy for far too long, evidence of manipulation and cold-blooded murder begin to unravel. And Todd may be the next victim to pay the deadly price of silence.
