Ashley Freeman is a promising art-history student passionate about every aspect of her life. One night, the twentysomething Bostonian meets Michael O'Connell, a handsome, dark-haired stranger whom she readily forgets after a single steamy session between the sheets. But Mike, a street-smart psychopath who stalks women for sport, has no intention of letting Ashley go. He watches her every move from the shadows and sends her countless e-mails professing his love. Ashley's family and friends shrug it off as a crush, until O'Connell, an ingenious computer hacker, reveals the damage he can do: he sabotages the reputation of Ashley's professor father with a stinging accusation of plagiarism and nearly gets her mother, a lawyer, disbarred. Bribes and threats do nothing to deter him, and when a private investigator assigned to the case turns up dead, the Freeman family takes extreme measures to quash O'Connell's relentless pursuit.
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- Would you like to hear a story ? An unusual one. But first you must promise that you will never let on where you've heard it. And if you do, you will conceal enough of the story so that it can never be tracked back to me or the persons I am going to talk about. No one will ever know if it is true or just a writers fiction. -
Imagine your child or a person you dearly love happens to meet a twisted mind, capable of shadowing you with every step you take, invading your life, penetrating your job, reputation, your whole existence and the people belonging to you.
This is how Scott, Sally and her girlfriend Hope feel when daughter Ashely opens up to them that she's got a problem with a boy stalking her.
Michael O'Connell fell in love with Ashley after a one-night-stand. It was nothing for her, it is the world for him. His possession drives him to follow her very step wherever she goes, whatever she does. There is no "No" acceptable for him, so Ashley's rejection just isn't valid to him. She is meant for him.
Confronted with this problem that began with nightly calls, later dead flowers, Ashely's family decides to buy her out of this problem but Michael doesn't function like he's supposed to. Instead his anger and rage focus on Ashley's family and they begin to realize there is no way out of this.
The family feels trapped, not knowing what he might do or might not do. Victims become conspirators driven by fear, the love for their child and a deadly plan is made. A plan that will hunt them for the rest of their life, a plan that won't let them sleep well for the rest of their lives.
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Let me say, this isn't a past paced book. It's a lot about insecurity, not knowing how to handle a situation in which you know you and the persons you love are in danger but you don't have anything in hand to make authorities to listen to you. It is about standing against a wall and the only way out is something you never considered you are capable of.
The book is a slow process into the life of a almost normal family:
Parents divorced, the mother, a lawyer, shifted her affectations into sharing her life with a woman, the daughter graduating in art, the father a teacher of history with a highly regarded reputation.
But when danger lingers settled minds start to spin.
It is a terrible imagination for everyone and that is exactly what the writer had in mind. He creeps you out and leads you slowly into the life of this family, scaring you by just imagining how easily it is to find yourself in a similar situation.
Well thought-out by Mr. Katzenbach. The books gets you at your deepest fears which no one likes to know they even exist.
Rating:
Visit John Katzenbach.
Mass Market Paperback: 512 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books (May 29, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0345464842
ISBN-13: 978-0345464842
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