Overview
A San Francisco detective becomes entangled with a private intelligence agency as he investigates what appears to be a traceless form of murder
A couple meets in a seedy hotel room for an illicit affair, the rules of which are simple: no names, no personal details, the specifics of their lives off-limits. It's all very exciting to Lore Cha—the wife of a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur—who thinks their forbidden meetings and taboo sexual encounters are exactly the escape she's been looking for: every single detail is as she imagined. But that's the problem. Phillip Krey anticipates every thought before she has it. He plays out her untold fantasies down to the last detail. His insights are beyond intuitive; they're invasive, even frightening. It's as if he has access into her mind. Across town, Elise Currin, wife to one of San Francisco's most powerful businessmen, is also seeing Krey, and is slowly being driven insane by his ability to tap in to her most private desires. When it's revealed that these women are also seeing the same therapist, a chilling scenario unfolds, and the quiet, plotting detective Marten Fane is called in.
Slowly Fane uncovers a plot that goes beyond Krey to reveal a powerful private sector, secret government involvement, and one of the most elaborate and monstrous psychological experiments imaginable: a traceless form of murder.
Synopsis
A San Francisco detective becomes entangled with a private intelligence agency as he investigates what appears to be a traceless form of murder
A couple meets in a seedy hotel room for an illicit affair, the rules of which are simple: no names, no personal details, the specifics of their lives off-limits. It's all very exciting to Lore Cha—the wife of a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur—who thinks their forbidden meetings and taboo sexual encounters are exactly the escape she's been looking for: every single detail is as she imagined. But that's the problem. Phillip Krey anticipates every thought before she has it. He plays out her untold fantasies down to the last detail. His insights are beyond intuitive; they're invasive, even frightening. It's as if he has access into her mind. Across town, Elise Currin, wife to one of San Francisco's most powerful businessmen, is also seeing Krey, and is slowly being driven insane by his ability to tap in to her most private desires. When it's revealed that these women are also seeing the same therapist, a chilling scenario unfolds, and the quiet, plotting detective Marten Fane is called in.
Slowly Fane uncovers a plot that goes beyond Krey to reveal a powerful private sector, secret government involvement, and one of the most elaborate and monstrous psychological experiments imaginable: a traceless form of murder.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
This contemporary thriller from the pseudonymous Harper offers a promising setup, but suffers from a lack of dramatic tension. When San Francisco psychotherapist Vera List realizes that two of her patients, Elise Currin and Lore Cha, both the wives of important and powerful men, have fallen under the sway of the same domineering lover who has somehow gained access to her confidential files, List turns to former SID detective Marten Fane for help. Fane discovers that an already deeply disturbing situation is even worse than it appears. Ryan Kroll, who works for a large private intelligence company, is determined to prove his warped psychological theories at the cost of his lovers' lives. As minor characters fall into peril, the enigmatic Fane so dominates the playing field as to make the struggle with Kroll almost one-sided. While the action doesn't always grip, Harper succeeds in sympathetically portraying Elise and Lore as they face genuine danger. Author tour. (July)Library Journal
Dr. Vera List, a prominent psychoanalyst in affluent Pacific Heights, San Francisco, has discovered something unsettling about two of her clients. Elise and Lore, wealthy trophy wives, are unwittingly having affairs with the same man, Ryan Kroll. Kroll has the uncanny ability to see inside their heads and anticipate their darkest fantasies and fears. The only conclusion Vera can come to is that he is breaking into her office, reading her patients' personal files, then using their psychosis against them. Torn between her concern for Elise and Lore and her profession's rules of patient confidentiality, Vera hires someone who works under the radar—Marten Fane, a former Special Investigations Division detective. VERDICT This series debut by a pseudonymous New York Times best-selling author offers a great premise and fast-paced read. Thriller fans will eagerly anticipate the next installment. [Tour; library marketing; see Prepub Alert, 1/10/11.]—Jennifer Funk, McKendree Univ. Lib., Lebanon, ILLibrary Journal
Lore Cha and Elise Currin are the bored wives of successful businessmen, and they're spooked. Each is having a secret, steamy affair with a man named Phillip Krey who seems increasingly able to read their thoughts and desires. Are they part of some scary psychological experiment? And will it lead to murder? Ask low-key detective Marten Fane. Harper, the pseudonym for a New York Times best-selling thriller author, decides to try something new. Intriguing premise; this will likely do well.Kirkus Reviews
Thriller veteran David Lindsey (The Face of the Assassin,2004, etc.) kicks off this pseudonymous new series with the surprisingly glossy account of a sexual predator with a talent for getting inside his partners' fantasies.
Trophy wife Elise Currin can't imagine how her lover Ray Kern can divine her darkest secrets. The sex is mind-blowing but scary. So is the idea that Ray knows everything she's ever thought. Lore Cha feels the same way about Philip Krey, who takes her places she's never gone and isn't sure she'll ever come back from. Most distressed of all, however, is Vera List, the widowed psychotherapist who treats both women, who don't know each other, and who's convinced that the two preternaturally sensitive lovers are one and the same, and that whoever he is, he's getting the lowdown on them in a much more prosaic way: by breaking into Vera's case files. Shaken, she consults Marten Fane, an ex–San Francisco cop who assures her that he's not a private detective: "There's no job description for what I do." He in turn brings in his colleagues Roma Solís, formerly of Colombia's Policía Nacional; counter-surveillance specialist Jon Bücher; and Bobby Noble, whose job at Virtual Marketing Research has nothing to do with marketing research. Together they plot to bring down the predator who's actually Ryan Kroll, a former CIA interrogator now with Vector Strategies, and whose long-range plan is a good deal more sinister than seducing and tormenting the best-looking women in the Bay Area.
Has the bones of a good-enough story, but the battle between the franchise hero and the bogeyman, swathed in self-seriousness, suffers from a serious absence of real menace beneath the inflated descriptions.