Nerve Damage

Renowned sculptor Roy Valois receives the worst news since learning of his adored wife Delia's death in South America fifteen years ago. His doctor tells him he's dying—and a morbid curiosity about how he'll be remembered inspires Roy, with the help of a local computer geek, to hack into a newspaper's system to read his prewritten obituary. But the death notice includes a small discrepancy about his late wife—and by calling the mistake to the attention of the surprised obit writer, Roy has inadvertently sealed an innocent man's doom.

Suddenly Roy has a mission: to uncover the truth about the woman he can't stop loving—secrets guarded by powerful forces who believe murder is an acceptable price for keeping them buried. With his disease-ravaged body's final betrayal rapidly approaching, Roy must somehow stay alive long enough to find the answers: Who was Delia? How did she die? Why did she die?

Did she die?

Publishers Weekly

In this gripping political suspense novel from Edgar-finalist Abrahams (Echo Falls), Vermont sculptor Roy Valois has never recovered from the tragic death of his beloved wife, Delia, in a helicopter accident while on a humanitarian mission to Honduras. Delia worked for the Hobbes Institute, "a think tank specializing in third-world economic problems." Roy's internal scars have kept him at a distance from others, even as the effects of asbestos exposure in his youth begin to ravage his body. When a chance remark leads Roy to search out the text of his already written obituary for the New York Times, he finds a minor error concerning the Hobbes Institute. That niggling loose thread obsesses the artist, but his efforts to set the record straight reveal that much of what he knew about his wife was a lie. The action and suspense are first-rate, but fans may find fewer insights into human nature than in such brilliant earlier books as Oblivionand End of Story. (Mar.)

Peter Abrahams is the bestselling author of Delusion, Nerve Damage, End of Story, Oblivion, The Fan, Behind the Curtain, and Into the Dark as well as Lights Out and Down the Rabbit Hole, for both of which he received Edgar Award nominations. Peter makes his home in Falmouth, Massachusetts, with his wife and four children.