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The Hidden Assassinsby: Robert Wilson |
Kill Meby Stephen WhiteKill Me, by author Stephen White, continues the series about Alan Gregory, psychologist in Boulder, Colorado. But the psychologist is only a small part of this story, and the novel takes you to an entirely different place from what you expect when you settle down to read a murder mystery. There's none of the guessing except for when the murder will happen. But there's plenty of mystery and suspense all of it completely outside and above the usual. Kill Me is an astonishing work, involving emotions, family ties, and death from an unusual viewpoint.The protagonist in Kill Me is a very wealthy man, with a wife named Thea and two small daughters. He takes risks not only the financial ones, but physical ones as well. Overcoming dangerous ski slopes, hang gliding, diving in caves and in wrecks, racing, etc. etc. etc. all of that is what he considers play, and his closest friends are just like him in that respect. This man is skiing in the Canadian Rockies with those friends when he accidentally mistakes a shelf of ice and snow for solid granite. He suffers a fall which cracks a number of ribs and breaks a wrist. Before a helicopter rescue, he informs his friends that he never wants to live as a vegetable, which is what he just came close to becoming. Through one of those friends with him during the accident, he meets what he calls the Death Angels. This is a group who will kill him when he passes a certain physical parameter, and our protagonist thinks it's like euthanasia. For a huge price, he enters the 'program.' Since he's fairly young, he figures death is a good way off. What he doesn't realize is how he will be killed or that other innocent people may also be slain when his death occurs. Everything is fine for a time until the rich man learns that he has something in his brain which will considerably hasten the time of his demise. Add to that the fact that he's just discovered he has a son from a long ago sexual encounter; a son who has already lost one father and is afraid of this one who takes so many life-threatening risks The visits to Alan Gregory, the psychologist, become more frequent, and our hero also becomes involved with one of the members of the Death Angels who has physical problems of her own. The protagonist reaches the point where the brain aneurysm has passed the parameter indicated by the Death Angels, but he doesn't want to die until he finds his suddenly missing son. Together he and his female friend manage to escape several attempts on their lives, and the final pages of the novel provide the usual mystery surprise but in a totally different way. Kill Me is a psychological thriller, but it's unlike Ruth Rendell or anyone else who has written in that genre. Hats off to Stephen White for giving us something new as well as scary! Alan Paul Curtis |
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