Thomas T. reviewed on 6/6/2006 + 27 more book reviews

Billy Wiles tends bar in a tavern in his small California hometown, from which he has never moved despite the horrific night when he became an orphan at 14 and its equally horrific aftermath. Some 15 years later, he published a well-received book of stories and met Barbara. They were about to be married when botulism in canned vichyssoise put her in a coma, and Billy more or less on hold, living on the hope that she will revive some day. Some five years further on, Billy finds, under the windshield wiper of his car, a note offering him a hideous decision. If he doesn't go to the police, "a lovely blond schoolteacher" will be killed; if he does, "an elderly woman" will be murdered. Billy doesn't exactly go the police. He shows the note to a cop who is probably his only real friend and who seconds his conjecture that the note is just an exceedingly tasteless prank. Of course, it isn't, and for the rest of an exceedingly tightly wound thriller stubbornly focused on him, Billy struggles to discover the identity of the soon-serial killer, who plants evidence incriminating Billy on his (her? their?) victims. Eventually and all too soon, Barbara is threatened, and Billy's subsequent suicide predicted, in the murderer's ostensibly final note.

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