Heartsick
by Chelsea Cain
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Book Reviews of Heartsick
Book Review: A deadly nightmare you can only pray to wake up from...
Summary: 5 Stars
Archie Sheridan is a detective with the Portland PD. During his rookie year as a detective, eleven years ago, he'd joined the task force that had been set up to capture the serial killer known as The Beauty Killer. For years, they tried to capture the killer, who evaded them, until a beautiful woman came into the picture. She approached the task force, introduced herself as a psychologist, and baited Archie until she kidnapped him, and tortured him. She kills Archie, but, unlike her previous victims, she brought him back, dialed 9-1-1 and turned herself in. And yet, she's not done torturing Archie, and he knows it.
Two years later, divorced from his wife, refusing to see his kids and addicted to prescription drugs, Archie is asked to head a new task force for a new serial killer, one who kidnaps teenage girls, strangles them, rapes them, douses them with bleach and dumps them in the river. With barely any clues or leads, they are on the hunt for the After School Strangler.
Meanwhile, Susan Ward, feature writer for the Herald, is assigned to follow Archie and write a feature about him. Dogging his heels, Susan sees things most reporters wouldn't unless they were to stumble upon a body themselves. For Susan, the After School Strangler hits close to home, for, years before, she'd actually gone to one of the murdered teenagers.
And all the while, hunting for a new serial killer, Archie continues his visits with Gretchen in prison every Sunday. The reason? Supposedly because she will give up a body of one of her victims; name and location of burial, but it has to be Archie. Does he go simply for closer to her victims families, or is there something more? Will they catch the After School Strangler before the fourth victim is found dead?
Incredible novel! Throughout the book, we visit Archie's past, during the time when Gretchen tortures him. The torture is described as such that the reader feels it, and it's gut-wrenching! She not only does a number on his body, but fractures his mind as well. Gretchen is such the narcissistic psychopath that just listening to the way she talks gives you the shivers while your stomach jumps in revulsion. Archie is very much now a broken person in mind as well as body, for her marks may heal, but they scar, both ways.
Susan, the reporter, is as screwed up as Archie, in a totally different manner. Having lost her father at 15, she rebelled, and hasn't been the same since.
And while this new serial killer is nowhere as bad as Gretchen, the killer is just as screwed up in the head as she is.
There may not be much action in this novel except at the end, it's the mind games and past torture that really grip you. You continue reading, as fascinated as you are repulsed, and even though you close the book, thinking there's no way you can continue reading it, you'll pick it right back up, wondering what else Gretchen does to Archie, wondering who the new serial killer is. I sooooo can't wait to get my hands on Sweetheart, book #2 in the series.
Book Review: Hannibal Lecter Redux
Summary: 2 Stars
I'm torn in my opinion of Chelsea Cain's bestselling thriller: on the one hand, it has interesting characters in intriguingly intricate relationships that spin out in satisfying ways. On the other hand, it owes such a huge debt to Thomas Harris that it feels like a reprise of Hannibal Lecter's Greatest Hits.
Portland, Oregon, police detective Archie Sheridan dedicated his entire career to tracking down Gretchen Lowell, who seems to be the lost daughter of the Green River Killer. The hunt culminated when she captured him, tormented him into submission for over a week, and inexplicably turned herself in.
Two years later, Sheridan is on medical leave. He's estranged from his family, living in an endless mental tape loop of his ten days with Gretchen, and popping enough Vicodin to make Doctor House look abstemious. That is, until another serial killer, preying this time on teenage girls, drags him out of isolation.
The problem is, if I told you only what I've said in the last two paragraphs, and handed you a copy of Red Dragon, you could write this book yourself. Its plot is so dependent on the arc of Thomas Harris that you could map the story in advance without looking ahead. Why should I pay money for a book I've already read?
Nor am I being flippant in my repeated references to Thomas Harris. This is a debt that even the author acknowledges. In chapter 31, Gretchen Lowell refers to another principal character, Susan Ward, as "Clarice." Why steal from a better author and then call your audience's attention to the theft?
In fairness, the characters' relationships are interesting. The twisted symbiosis that lingers between Gretchen and Sheridan holds interest and could pay dividends for Freudian analysis. And Susan Ward's elaborate layers of self-deception afforded some genuine surprises as I read.
Still, this isn't enough. Especially when relationships of such potential are hostage to the tender mercies of a plot lifted paint-by-numbers from more path-breaking author, these virtues pale. I knew who did it and why less than halfway through the book. The only reason the protagonists don't know is because they don't realize they're in a novel.
I can honestly recommend this book for people who like to only read what they already know they're going to like. Since this book cherry-picks the best of the crime thriller genre, it has a large guaranteed audience. Readers who like to wear novels like a favorite old shirt will love this book.
But readers like me aren't part of that audience. I like mysteries, from Inspector Dupin and Sherlock Holmes all the way up to Thomas Harris and Ian Rankin. I like them because they plumb the range of human psyche in new and revolutionary ways. And there's not one new or revolutionary idea at any point between these covers.
Book Review: "One day of privacy. You get the other six."
Summary: 4 Stars
Building her popular thriller on a troubling narrative, a serial killer and the detective she kidnaps, tortures and seduces in a Stockholm Syndrome-esque drama, a clever premise yields an unusual look into the dynamics of a profoundly dysfunctional relationship. Ten years after his torture at the hands of Gretchen Lowell, a beautiful murderer, detective Archie Sheridan is still in thrall to a woman who has absorbed his life, taken the place of wife and family and dominates his dreams and waking moments. Begging her to kill him, put him out of his agony, Archie must live with the consequences of the 9-1-1 call that delivers Gretchen to the authorities and Archie to the emergency room. Ten years later, assigned to a current spate of serial murders of teenaged girls in Portland, Oregon, Sheridan exists on a diet of pain pills and adrenaline, saddled with a broken body and a dependency on drugs begun during his kidnapping.
His body hostage to the narcotizing effects of the pills he carries with him everywhere, Archie struggles to maintain a placid mien to the world, to hide the extent of the physical and psychological damage wrought by his captivity. Most troubling is his inability to break free from Gretchen, whom he visits every Sunday as she gradually reveals the names and location of other victims. But when edgy young reporter Susan Ward of a local paper, the Herald, is assigned to track Archie's every move for a four-part human interest series, Sheridan seizes on an opportunity to break free from Lowell while solving the new rash of murders, Susan capturing his sympathy and respect as they visit one crime scene and broken family after another. With the aid of an FBI profiler, Archie applies his considerable insights into finding this killer, while Susan bravely embraces a career path that puts her on a collision course with danger.
While the plot is unique, frightening even, in its implications for Archie's future, it is also deeply disturbing on many levels, particularly Archie's inability to break free from his would-be murderer, revealing unspeakable vulnerabilities in the victim of an ingenious seduction that binds him more tightly to Lowell than life. Whatever Sheridan does while solving the recent spate of murders with his team, he is inextricably tied to the woman who awaits his weekly visits like a hungry spider. Even Susan, though she breaks through Archie's considerable defenses, is powerless to interfere with the masterful manipulation of a man emotionally destroyed by his captivity and his tormenter. At the core of this story beats the heart of darkness, a netherworld where a monster is beloved, her heinous acts insignificant in the face of her seduction. In a narcotic haze, Sheridan dances to a melody only he can hear, ever closer to a precipice that, once crossed, yields certain annihilation. Luan Gaines/ 2008.
Book Review: Disturbing, but good!
Summary: 5 Stars
Oh, man. This is one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. It opens with Archie Sheridan, a detective who's been chasing a serial killer for over ten years, being captured by that serial killer--who turns out to be a woman--and viciously tortured.
Then in the next chapter, we skip ahead two years. Archie has somehow survived his ordeal. But he's addicted to vicodin, and his wife and kids have left him. The serial killer, Gretchen Lowell, has been caught and is serving life in prison. Archie visits her weekly, for reasons we don't learn until later in the book.
The book's present-day storyline is about Archie pursuing another serial killer, but the real compelling question, the one that kept my eyes glued to the page, was WHAT HAPPENED TO ARCHIE?
When I read that his wife had left him, I immediately thought the worst of her. He's been through a terrible ordeal, and assuming he's not violent or dangerous (he's not), how can she abandon him to struggle through his recovery alone? But as I read further and learned more details, I realized she had very good reasons for leaving, and I sympathized. I even thought she'd done the right thing.
As for Archie's relationship with Gretchen, the woman who tortured him almost to death, it's tragic and it's very disturbing.
The book isn't perfect, because the Archie and Gretchen backstory is so much more compelling than the main storyline about the new serial killer. But that backstory sure kept me reading, as did my desire to see Archie grow and recover from his psychological damage. The writing is top-notch and so consistently entertaining that I rarely felt tempted to skim.
I recommend this novel highly, but be careful--it's not for the squeamish. It deals with such creepy concepts as the conflation of violence and intimacy, dependency and attachment, obsession and love. And every word of it felt absolutely true. That's what's so disturbing about it. I was careful not to read this book within a hour of going to bed, for fear it would give me nightmares.
It's the first of a series, and I plan to read on. But I'm going to need a palate cleanser first--something light and fluffy! Rainbows and kittens!
Book Review: Overhyped and Painfully Average
Summary: 3 Stars
Every once in a while I read a book which has gotten rave reviews and when I'm finished, I find myself thinking, "Did I just read the same book?" Such was the case with Heartsick.
First, let's look at the plot. While it's unusual to have a female serial killer as the villain, Cain doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel here. Gretchen Lowell, the beautiful psycho who likes to torture and kill people, is only mildly interesting because she's a pretty woman instead of a nerdy or ugly man. Otherwise she's a mixture of Hannibal Lecter and every other dime-store serial killer we've seen over the past few years.
When the book starts, Gretchen's in jail and we learn her story in flashbacks. Meanwhile, the main plot centers around a very average, predictable serial killer who murders white teenage females (yawn). This plot line is so bland and commonplace that even a tiny little plot twist at the end doesn't save it. The poor pacing of the book doesn't help, either. After a thrilling, action-packed opening, the reader has to slog through 150 pages or so before anything else happens in the book.
My main problem with this book, though, was the writing itself. The editors at St. Martin's should be flogged for this one. Author Chelsea Cain can't simply write a straight-forward action paragraph or a dialogue scene. She has to continually interrupt herself with long, long descriptions of what everyone is wearing, what everyone is doing, the facial expressions they make, the way they scratch their heads or raise an eyebrow, etc. I ended up skipping whole chunks of this boring, tedious and amateurish prose in order to get to the meat of the story. Cain just loves giving long-winded descriptions of common acts such as putting on socks, opening a door, etc. I kid you not when I say that 75 pages could've been cut from this book if the editors had done their job and chopped these parts out.
So, in a nutshell. Heartsick is basically your common, everyday McDonald's hamburger of suspense thrillers. Nothing really new or orignal, but it'll probably fill you up if you're really, really hungry for something to read and can't find anything better around.