From Publishers Weekly
Compared to Campbell's extraordinary horror novel, Nazareth Hill, his new suspense thriller is disappointingly ordinary. Reprising the theme that has dominated his writing for the past decade, Campbell once again contemplates the dismal consequences of the breakdown of the family. The happy married life of young father and investigative reporter Geoff Davenport is shattered when his unbalanced, resentful, long-lost stepbrother, Ben, kidnaps Geoff's three-year-old son. Ben still blames Geoff for the parental abandonment he suffered after his sibling's birth. Incited by Geoff's recent TV documentary on a negligent home for children, Ben has embarked on a crime spree that culminates in the kidnapping. The plot unfolds without complication as a simple cat-and-mouse game in which Ben lures Geoff to an inevitable confrontation through clues keyed to shared childhood experiences. It is the novel's conceit that Geoff's family fails to recognize Ben's identity, but readers will guess easily which peripheral character in the Davenports' social circle to suspect. Although Campbell provides moments of tension that rival his most chilling terrors (including a riveting finale), these are just tentative shocks in an otherwise slack crime drama. It's a tribute to his precise characters and dialogue that this predictable story still compels attention, yet one senses Campbell is just marking time before his next horror opus.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Kirkus Reviews
British psychothriller in the vein of Campbell's The Count of Eleven (1992) and Nazareth Hill (1997), with none of his more familiar occult horror and supernatural trimmings. Some nut is killing the happily marrieds around Windsor--perhaps someone insanely jealous of their joys, and clearly someone who has a way of tapping into their home life. Could it be the bland but persistent cab driver who seems unnaturally interested in the private lives of his fares? Or another of the eccentrics on the periphery of the community? The theme of endangered families allows Campbell to display one of his most delectable gifts: writing affectionately about marriage and children while unsettling the reader with subtle suggestions of imminent disaster. Here, he focuses on Geoff and Gail Davenport and their three-year-old son Paul. Geoff, an investigative TV journalist, has just published an expos of mismanaged children's homes when he begins receiving heavy-breathing wordless phone calls. He suspects that the figure on the other end is his long-vanished older half-brother Ben, a suspicion he reluctantly shares with Gail, who until now had not known of Bens existence. Vastly abused as a child, Ben ran off at 18 rather than enter the family firm, and he hasn't been seen since. Now, Geoff suspects, Ben wants to revive their childhood game of hide-and-seek; this time out, the clues include a letter left under the bedroom rug of a house they were raised in. Geoff resists Ben's attempts to get him to play, but Ben, of course, isnt just playinghas in fact become a serial killer. As his crimes pile up, he earns the moniker The Kissing Bandit for the ingenious and gruesome way in which he murders couples. One knows far ahead that Ben's big moment will come with his kidnap of baby Paul. Ghoulish? You bet, though clever Ben isn't as fearsome as the savagely moronic Fancy family of Campbells 1996 novel, The One Safe Place. --
Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
