Helpful Score: 1
Possibly the best thriller novel I've read all year. The plot twists are so clever, no matter how many mystery thrillers you read, you're bound to be surprised.
The police pick up what appears to be a homeless crazy guy and bring him to the high security ward at a NYC psychiatric hospital where he'll be evaluated and after checking his health, if deemed not a danger to himself or others, will be released on his own recognizance. That's pretty much all I can tell you without giving anything away. Is he crazy or not? Is he out to save NYC, or what is his goal? Just know it's not at all what you think it will be... GREAT READ!
The police pick up what appears to be a homeless crazy guy and bring him to the high security ward at a NYC psychiatric hospital where he'll be evaluated and after checking his health, if deemed not a danger to himself or others, will be released on his own recognizance. That's pretty much all I can tell you without giving anything away. Is he crazy or not? Is he out to save NYC, or what is his goal? Just know it's not at all what you think it will be... GREAT READ!
Wealthy entrepreneur Edward Mackinnon wants to purchase a prestigious New York City building and transform it into the first private, for-profit prison.
The fact that it will displace hundreds of New York City's lower-middle-class citizens and destroy a community is not his concern. Enter Bill Kaiser, a
brilliant, charming psychotic with his own idea of justice. After planting a bomb in one of the developer's apartments, Bill mutilates himself in an attempt
to avoid arrest, which lands him in a psychiatric hospital. There he meets Sharon Blauntner, a psychiatric nurse who reveals to Bill her secrets and desire
for vengeance. Bill incorporates Sharon into a repertoire of worthy causes and imagines a relationship between them.
The fact that it will displace hundreds of New York City's lower-middle-class citizens and destroy a community is not his concern. Enter Bill Kaiser, a
brilliant, charming psychotic with his own idea of justice. After planting a bomb in one of the developer's apartments, Bill mutilates himself in an attempt
to avoid arrest, which lands him in a psychiatric hospital. There he meets Sharon Blauntner, a psychiatric nurse who reveals to Bill her secrets and desire
for vengeance. Bill incorporates Sharon into a repertoire of worthy causes and imagines a relationship between them.
Psychiatric nurse Sharon Blautner needed to know if the patient, Bill Kaiser, dropped off by the NY police is really crazy. He was found in an incinerator room, naked, and with a razor he used to cut himself. Bill acts like a schizophrenic. But he is sympathetic, intelligent, caring....
Sharon falls in love and lets a secret slip that helps Bill torch his way out of the hospital. A madman, bent on revenge, is now loose on the streets of New York. She is the only one who can stop him. Can she do it?
Sharon falls in love and lets a secret slip that helps Bill torch his way out of the hospital. A madman, bent on revenge, is now loose on the streets of New York. She is the only one who can stop him. Can she do it?
If you like thrillers, you will love this book. Exceptional work!
From Kirkus Reviews
Imagine Hannibal Lecter with a social conscience, and you'll have the germ of Hall's diabolically sharp new thriller. Bill Kaiser is a man with a mission: He wants a Manhattan day-care center installed in the decaying Carnegie-Hayden building so much that he's willing to kill the project's opponents. Captured by the police after planting a bomb in sanctimonious Senator Arvin Redwell's high-rise, Bill fakes insanity convincingly enough to get committed for three days' observation in Bellevue, where he puts on such a winning (though demented) front that psychiatric nurse Sharon Blautner starts to open up to him. But Bill is determined to continue his campaign, so he manages to get the unwitting Sharon to smuggle in an innocuous-looking package that's filled with the goodies he needs to engineer a spectacular escape. Naturally, Sharon's accused of complicity in Bill's escape and fired from her job. Even worse, she sees that Bill's appointed himself her personal avenging angel, meting out condign justice to the randy surgeon who liked his sex rougher than she did and to the sniveling bureaucrat who fired her as he warms up for the coup de grace: going after Edward Mackinnon, the treacherous onetime partner who stole Sharon's father's business and drove him to suicide--the same Edward Mackinnon who just happens to be the megabucks developer who plans to turn Carnegie-Hayden into a maximum security prison. Nothing of Mackinnon's, it seems, is safe from Bill's high-tech wizardry and homespun moralizing, and as Bill scores triumph after triumph over this robber baron, Sharon, who's working with the FBI, finds herself wondering whose side she's really on. The final payoff, though ingenious, isn't up to the rest of this exhilarating yarn from Hall (Nightmare Logic, not reviewed). But for most of its length, it really does manage to make its villain both scary and unsettlingly appealing. (First printing of 200,000; $300,000 ad/promo) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --
From Kirkus Reviews
Imagine Hannibal Lecter with a social conscience, and you'll have the germ of Hall's diabolically sharp new thriller. Bill Kaiser is a man with a mission: He wants a Manhattan day-care center installed in the decaying Carnegie-Hayden building so much that he's willing to kill the project's opponents. Captured by the police after planting a bomb in sanctimonious Senator Arvin Redwell's high-rise, Bill fakes insanity convincingly enough to get committed for three days' observation in Bellevue, where he puts on such a winning (though demented) front that psychiatric nurse Sharon Blautner starts to open up to him. But Bill is determined to continue his campaign, so he manages to get the unwitting Sharon to smuggle in an innocuous-looking package that's filled with the goodies he needs to engineer a spectacular escape. Naturally, Sharon's accused of complicity in Bill's escape and fired from her job. Even worse, she sees that Bill's appointed himself her personal avenging angel, meting out condign justice to the randy surgeon who liked his sex rougher than she did and to the sniveling bureaucrat who fired her as he warms up for the coup de grace: going after Edward Mackinnon, the treacherous onetime partner who stole Sharon's father's business and drove him to suicide--the same Edward Mackinnon who just happens to be the megabucks developer who plans to turn Carnegie-Hayden into a maximum security prison. Nothing of Mackinnon's, it seems, is safe from Bill's high-tech wizardry and homespun moralizing, and as Bill scores triumph after triumph over this robber baron, Sharon, who's working with the FBI, finds herself wondering whose side she's really on. The final payoff, though ingenious, isn't up to the rest of this exhilarating yarn from Hall (Nightmare Logic, not reviewed). But for most of its length, it really does manage to make its villain both scary and unsettlingly appealing. (First printing of 200,000; $300,000 ad/promo) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --
