"It almost seemed as if winter had already come." Those were the final words of Last Summer. In this Evan Hunter's new novel, winter has indeed arrived-and Sandy, David and Peter are together again. Sandy, David, and Peter five years later. The searing summer of Rhoda is far behind them. More stylish and sophisticated than they were as adolescents, each complete in the presence of the other, they form a brilliant trio: handsome, intelligent, witty, humorous, impregnable-and deadly. Into their dazzling orbit come Foderman and Mary Margaret. What happens to them all, in the days before Christmas, is as chilling as the snow-covered terrain surrounding them, as terror-ridden as the trails they ski. Come Winter is an unforgettable exploration into the nature of evil.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sick and Twisted People Abound,
By zimbee (Las Vegas, Nevada, United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Come winter (Hardcover)
Come Winter is a continuation of Last Summer. I read them in the wrong order but I believe this has made Come Winter's impact greater. The story of how twisted people amuse themselves is captivating in the self-perceived innocence of the characters and the suffering they inflict on others. I could not put the book down. One of Hunter's best works.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting Sequel to Last Summer,
By
This review is from: Come winter (Hardcover)
Come Winter is the sequel to Hunter's earlier book, Last Summer. It follows much the same format, with many parallel occurrences. The locale has changed, from an island resort community to a ski lodge. The unit of three (David, Sandy and narrator Peter) return. Rhoda, the foil from the previous novel, appears only in a cameo when Sandy relates seeing her in a store as Rhoda plans to go to Paris. We aren't sure if Sandy is telling the truth, and that is what is striking about this later work. Last Summer was a very serious coming of age novel, an end of the innocence. Now that the innocence is gone, however, can we really trust the characters? Part of the story is told in the form of Peter's sessions with his psychotherapist, who is trying to convince him to leave his association with David and Sandy (the pop psych "co dependency" term had not been invented yet or it surely would have been used here). In these sessions, Peter repeatedly denies that they raped Rhoda in the previous work, and we aren't sure if he himself believes it or not. Rhoda's replacement in Come Winter is Mary Margaret, who is somewhat physically similar to Rhoda. Behaviorally, however, she is no Rhoda. In fact, she might even be a match for Sandy in callousness, bordering on sociopathy (if not crossing the line). Mary Margaret is portrayed as an anti-semite, and is not a character who draws sympathy from the reader, as Rhoda had. When the inevitable clash between Sandy and Mary Margaret comes to its climax, we see that little has changed from Last Summer. Peter and David and Sandy have grown older, and harder, and life simply goes on. Don't expect any moral epiphanies on the part of any of the main characters, which may be what Hunter was trying to tell us. Perhaps this is not the work that Last Summer was, but it is an engaging read nonetheless and a must for the many fans of Last Summer (and the excellent movie version).
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Chilling stuff (includes spoilers)....,
By Lieutenant Bookman (Surrey, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Come winter (Hardcover)
I recently read the novel Last Summer after watching the film. That novel and this one are both out of print - shame!
According to the flyleaf of my book, at the time of its publication, 1973, Evan Hunter was working on the screenplay of Come Winter - I note that it never got filmed. I think this is because of a content problem. Basically, it confirms that the three rapists from Last Summer not only got away with it, they went deeper and deeper into denial. In this novel, they meet someone even more twisted than they are - Mary Margaret. In Last Summer Peter's accounts of the misdeeds of the gang were candid. Here, he is in therapy and trying to minimise the culpability of their actions. That clouds some of the episodes in this book - for example, a sexual encounter with a waitress which may well have been rape. The climax this time - easily foretold by the headings - is the death of Mary Margaret. She may have been deliberately killed by Sandy, or maybe it was an accident. As stated before, Peter is no longer as reliable a narrator as he was in Last Summer. I don't say this to criticise the novel, it is part of his character development from the earlier book. The main advantage of this novel over Last Summer is that Mary Margaret is a completely unlikeble character, unlike Rhoda who was quite sympathetic. I'd have given it four stars if the gang had got some sort of comeuppance, or if something had happened to break up their strange threesome.
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