Rating: Summary: Great Book!! Review: I read a lot of thriller/crime novels, and this is probably in the top 20 of all time! I thoroughly enjoyed it, and like his writing style. He sucks you into the story quickly, and doesn't let up until the end. You will not be disappointed in this book!!
Rating: Summary: Exciting plot with a disappointing conclusion. Review: I really enjoyed reading this novel halfway through I could not put it down. Though I was very disappointed with the ending it just died. Try it if you like a good mind game.
Rating: Summary: Well paced thriller Review: I thought the book was great. Cleverly plotted, well paced, suspenseful. Hard to put down. The scenes are so "visual" I'm surprised it isn't a movie yet.
Rating: Summary: Gripping, character-driven thriller Review: I thought this was a thrilling book with enough plot twists and character faults that it kept me riveted, awake all night, and reading. Though the character of parolee Whitey Truax was a bit contrived and convenient, the inclusion of his character was a nice fit into this sinister tale. I have recommended the book to all my friends. Peter Abrahams has the gift.
Rating: Summary: DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK Review: I've been reading mystery stories since I was ten. The number now probably stands at two thousand. Maybe 500 I did not finsh. I listened to this book on tape and did not complete the first tape. This is the first time I have ever returned a book to the library and told them I was disgusted. A brutally butchered frog, three sex acts, one, an adultery in every sense of the word, sex with a prostitute that ends with the prositute and her pimp being bludgeoned with a baseball bat, the last a pathetic attempt at marital sex. And as I said I never finshed the first tape.
Rating: Summary: A sly and suspenseful tour de force Review: In "A Perfect Crime" Peter Abrahams gives us several well-developed characters, then sets them on a collision course that is as unpredictable as it is inevitable. We know the scenario can only lead to disaster, but what kind? And who will be the ultimate victim(s)? The pace picks up, the complications multiply, and the plot switches gears often enough to keep readers guessing till the end. A really well-written story.
Rating: Summary: A sly and suspenseful tour de force Review: In "A Perfect Crime" Peter Abrahams gives us several well-developed characters, then sets them on a collision course that is as unpredictable as it is inevitable. We know the scenario can only lead to disaster, but what kind? And who will be the ultimate victim(s)? The pace picks up, the complications multiply, and the plot switches gears often enough to keep readers guessing till the end. A really well-written story.
Rating: Summary: kewl Review: it wasn't i thought it would be, but i think that was why i liked the novel. kewl, breezy. immoral was a good thing. added conflict, on a relationship level. i couldn't figure out Whitey's character, didn't buy into his motivation, but, hey, it's fiction. still it was enough for me to wonder how it would play out. they only thing i didn't like was the ending...maybe it was me, but I didn't quite get the meaning of that "scene" Still, the writer did a lot of work to make a lot of the conflicts intertwine...okay, enough typing. back to reading... nuff 'said
Rating: Summary: Heir to Ira Levin Review: Not that Ira Levin is gone or anything, but his output has slowed considerably now that he is in old age. In any case, though he isn't quite as good as Levin, Abrahams is very close to being so, and that's a tall order I wouldn't have believed any other American suspense novelist to be capable of. In Abrahams' case, his plots are a little less organic than Levin's, not quite so high concept, but he is twisty as all get out and his characters are amazingly real. You really get caught up in their dilemmas even if some of them are just plain bad apples.
Francie is having an affair with Ned because, well, just because. Roger, her husband, is so weird and cold that in a way you don't blame her, and yet on the other hand, as she comes to realize, she is hurting an innocent woman by sleeping with her husband. She gets hung up on this infidelity thing, as her natural decency kicks in once she befriends Anne at the local tennis club. I don't even like tennis but Abrahams is great at evoking the kick of it, the primal tensions it releases, how the game can hook you in and take you to a place you've never been taken before.
I didn't really buy the part about Whitey Truax and why Roger thought he could possibly control him, but to be fair Abrahams builds Roger up as kind of a Nietzchean superman who's dumb as a post, so I guess it fits. Whitey makes you squirm he's so vicious and horny, but there's also a lot of class resentment between Whitey and Roger that's perfectly done, worthy of a Henry Roth or a Zora Neale Hurston. Abrahams is a literary artist, and each of his books presents another technical problem he solves with the assurance and inventiveness of Flaubert. Here, in A PERFECT CRIME, he approaches the heights of THE TUTOR, not only his own TUTOR, but that of Henry James.
Rating: Summary: A Few Notes On A Perfect Crime Review: One of the nicest things that's happened since A Perfect Crime came out has been the number of women who have spoken to me at book signings about how much they like the female characters. The reviewers seem to have tended to concentrate on the Prospero-Caliban relationship of Roger and Whitey, where the scary stuff comes from, but it's my belief that the emotional heart of the story lies in the relationship between Francie and Anne (the wife of Francie's lover). Adultery raises all kinds of agonizing questions - although you wouldn't know it from the Starr Report, where the only agonizing seems to be over tactics - agonizing questions like: Is there a right to happiness? What risk can others be put to in order to get it? What are children owed? Is there irresistible love? If so, does it render all these other questions moot? Writing Roger was a real challenge because he's much smarter than I am. He has an IQ of 181. (I was worried that number was too high to be believable. I've since read of some Wall Street guy with a 200-and-something IQ - I think he puts it on his business card.) Once I got into Roger's character though, I looked forward every day to those trips inside his head. What fun it was to be that smart for a few hours! All those extra IQ points vanished the moment I left my desk, of course.Something that seems to have gone unnoticed so far is the relationship this book bears to The Scarlet Letter. There are a number of suggestions in the story, and the epigraph itself is taken from Hawthorne. Rev. Dimmesdale, for example, in The Scarlet Letter: I thought, what's the equivalent of a Colonial reverend in our society? That's why I made Ned, Francie's lover, a radio pop psychologist.A Perfect Crime didn't begin with Hawthorne, however. It began in my mind with a visual image, a powerful image I couldn't ignore and knew I wanted to write about. This was the image of that beautiful, piney cabin - where Francie and Ned would meet - all alone on an island in a frozen river. I had the feeling it was a perfect place for both very good things and very terrible things to happen.I hope people enjoy the book, and I'm always interested to hear from readers.
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