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Heartsick.
Cain, Chelsea (author).
Sept. 2007. 288p. St. Martin’s/Minotaur, hardcover, $23.95 (0-312-36846-1).
REVIEW.
First published June 1, 2007 (Booklist).
It’s a long way from a Nancy Drew parody (Confessions of a Teen Sleuth, 2005) to one of the most original serial-killer thrillers to appear in several years, but Cain makes the leap unscathed. Throw out all your assumptions about the sameness of serial-killer novels; this one breaks the mold. Yes, the notorious Gretchen Lowell is behind bars throughout the novel (a la Hannibal Lecter), and, yes, she counsels the Portland, Oregon, cop who is chasing a new sociopath, but unlike in Silence of the Lambs, Archie Sheridan, Cain’s detective hero, was one of Lowell’s victims. (After kidnapping and killing more than 200 people, Lowell captured and tortured Sheridan, then inexplicably let him live.) So two plotlines unfold alternately, each feeding the other: the grisly backstory of what Lowell did to Sheridan (“Whatever you think this is going to be like,” she whispers, “it’s going to be worse”), and the real-time account of Sheridan’s search for a new serial killer who is preying on teenage girls from Portland’s high schools. The plots are thickened by costar Susan Ward, a pink-haired, punky reporter, and by Sheridan’s addiction to prescription drugs—and his unbreakable emotional attachment to Lowell, his torturer and savior. Cain never misses a beat here, turning the psychological screws ever tighter for both Sheridan and Ward while drawing us deep into the nightmare that lives inside Gretchen Lowell’s head. Sheridan will remind thriller fans of Ridley Pearson’s Lou Boldt, and Cain’s use of Portland as a setting—contrasting the charm of the city against the horror of the crimes—echoes Pearson’s similar use of Seattle. But Heartsick is in no way deriviative. This could well be the thriller of the year.— Bill Ott
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