Dermot Nolan is an international award winning, bestselling author who seems to have it all - a successful career, fame, fortune, and a beautiful wife. Between the royalties coming in from his most recent book, and the revenue he has received from the film company that bought the rights, Dermot seems every bit the literary darling. And yet, for the last year, he has suffered from a bout of writer's block and in the process has grossly overspent his income. So when Dermot comes across an unsolicited horror manuscript stuffed into his mailbox from one Albert K. Arnold entitled My Worst Nightmares--My Delicious Memoirs, he cannot help but feel intrigued. it tells the story of the twisted, homicidal "Dream Healer" who snares his victims via his website worstnightmares.com, seduces them into revealing their innermost fears, and then kills them by revisiting their very own nightmares upon them, magnified a hundredfold. And while Dermot is disgusted by the horror of Mr. Arnold's manuscript, he is also deeply intrigued, so much that he seeks to solve his writer's block by rewriting Arnold's novel as his own.
Sweeping aside the threatening prospect of plagiarism, Dermot begins to rework the novel while simultaneously researching Arnold's stories. In his search, he slowly begins to realize that the novel may not be entirely fictional, that these poor characters may have perished at the hands of a twisted torturer.
Could the Dream Healer be real ? Could these innocent cyber-surfers have fallen victim to a raving maniac ? And could Dermot be writing his own ticket to death ... his very own worst nightmare ?
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Bestselling author Dermot Nolan suffers from writers block for the last year. His editor pushes him to give her something to work with. So when the unsolicited manuscript arrives he is tempted to look at it but its content is appalling not only in literally ways.
Dermot however wants to back himself up and research the deaths and names. He soon figures that the unknown author going by the name of Albert K. Arnold has a psychopaths psyche. Further pressured Dermot decides to keep his knowledge to himself, especially when he and his wife Neela, are sure, that Arnold killed himself by jumping of a roof.
He feels safe until a reporter receives secret calls filling him in with clues about crime scenes that relate to Dermot's book locations and place him at the scene of crime.
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Unfortunately I don't have much praises for this novel. Despite taking me forever to finish it I've read a similar book just a few weeks ago. The characters actions didn't often make sense to me and they weren't likeable at all. Whatever happened to them, they brought it onto themselves.
The ending wasn't really an ending, the story just stopped at some point. After the last few chapters finally got my attention it just wasn't conclusive for me and left questions open.
In the opening acknowledgements the author claims to believe he delivered his best novel to date. With five novels published in Australia, Worst Nightmares doesn't keep up with the promise Publishers Weekly announced as the novel being an exciting page-turner. But what else to say, Publishers Weekly still thinks Worst Nightmares is Shane's debut novel.
I won't spent my time or money on this author again.
Rating:
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Vanguard Press (May 12, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 159315514X
ISBN-13: 978-1593155148
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