Dead Ringer [Paperback]

Ken Douglas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2003

Maggie Nesbitt is pregnant and depressed, because her husband isn't the father of her unborn child. She's thinking about abortion when she's attacked on the beach. She barely gets away, then gets the shock of her life the next morning when she sees that she has been killed on the news and that her nude body had been dumped in the trash behind a beachside bar. She finds out the body behind the bar is the twin sister she'd been told had died when she was two weeks old. She also learns her twin was divorced from a horrid man and that she had an eight-year-old daughter, Jasmine. Maggie, showing a bump on her head she got while getting away from her attackers, claims partial amnesia and steps into her dead twin's life. This way she can have her baby, give it a home, and save Jasmine from having to go and live with her father. But she doesn't know her twin saw someone do murder. And that someone thinks he killed the wrong woman.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Have you ever been so depressed, not suicidal, because suicide is stupid, but so depressed that you’d do anything to get out of your life, if you only could? Have you ever wanted anything badly enough to walk away from it all?

Maggie Nesbitt has. She’s pregnant and her famous newsman husband isn’t the father of her child. She’s going to get an abortion, but not before she gets good and drunk. Drinking is bad for the baby, but so what? It’s going to be dead in a few days anyway. However a chance encounter in a supermarket leads her to believe the twin she’d thought had died in infancy may still be alive, and living not far away. Curiosity gets her out of the doldrums, she hops a bus, goes to her sister’s and through a seemingly unconnected series of events winds up stepping into her twin’s life.

She did this because while at her sister’s, she sees on the news that Nick Nesbitt’s wife had been found murdered, her nude body discovered behind a gay bar. She quickly figures out that someone has killed her twin, thinking it was her, or maybe it was random, either way, she now has a way out of her problem. She can keep her baby. All she has to do is takeover her twin’s life.

Easier said than done. Her sister had a daughter, friend’s that knew her, an ex-husband and a brand new fiancé, plus a killer after her, because unknown to Maggie, the killer wasn’t after her, he was after her twin, and when he finds out the woman he killed is still walking, talking and breathing, he’s not very happy.

Ken Douglas has written a woman in pearl thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat as you read the night away. Or if you have a long flight, DEAD RINGER will cut it short.

From the Inside Flap

Maggie Nesbitt is pregnant and depressed, because her husband isn’t the father of her unborn child. She’s thinking about abortion, when she’s attacked on the beach. She barely gets away, then gets the shock of her life the next morning when she sees that she has been killed on the news and that her nude body had been dumped in the trash behind a beachside bar.

She finds out the body behind the bar is the twin sister she’d been told had died when she was two weeks old. She also learns her twin was divorced from a horrid man and that she had an eight-year-old daughter, Jasmine.

Maggie, showing a bump on her head she got while getting away from her attackers, claims partial amnesia and steps into her dead twin’s life. This way she can have her baby, give it a home, and save Jasmine from having to go and live with her father. But she doesn’t know her twin saw someone do murder.

And now that someone thinks he killed the wrong woman.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 340 pages
• Publisher: Bootleg Press (January 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0974524638
• ISBN-13: 978-0974524634
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,342,302 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Better than a Roller Coaster, May 11, 2011

By 

Lonnie E. Holder "The Review's the Thing" (Columbus, Indiana, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dead Ringer (Paperback)

Rarely do I disagree with the bulk of other reviewers on any particular item. In the case of this book, it appears that I am in the minority in that I thought this book was thrilling and a fun read. I have recommended this book to others and liked it so much that I read it twice.

Maggie Nesbitt is upset because she is pregnant by someone other than her husband and she wants to keep the baby. Maggie's life is not going the way she wants it to go. Then an incredible coincidence provides Maggie with the chance to step into her sister's life, which would permit her to do what she wants, including keeping her baby. Sadly, the people who murdered her sister are still after Maggie. What follows is a thrill ride that ends only with the final pages of the book.

One of the things about many of the other reviews that surprised me was that so many people found the characters to be unbelievable and cartoonish. Apparently, these people have never read an Ian Fleming James Bond book or a Stephen Berry book, to name a couple. When you read a thriller, which is the genre of this book, you expect a lot of excitement and you expect people to make incredible and perhaps unbelievable decisions quickly. You expect people to do strange things.

This book was more than what I expected. The story was fast-paced. There were mysterious characters with unknown motivations. There were guns, murders and at least one psychopath. Yet, the story was coherent and all of it was exciting.

When I read a book, I expect to be entertained. Ken Douglas entertained me, quite well, thank you very much. If you are wondering whether you should believe the one and two star reviews or the four and five star reviews, all I can say is that you have to decide what you expect from a thriller. Note that this story is not a mystery. Yes, there is some mystery in this story, but it is a thriller. If your idea of a thriller is fast-pace, lots of action, and characters that do things that verge on the unbelievable - or maybe they are unbelievable, then welcome to a thrill better than a roller coaster ride, because this one lasted much longer than a roller coaster.

Enjoy!

My thanks to the author for providing me with a review copy of his book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What happens when your "death" is greatly exaggerated?, April 5, 2008

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dead Ringer (Paperback)

Another recreational read that kept me up a bit later than normal... Dead Ringer by Ken Douglas. This was actually sent to me by another author who is friends with Douglas. Not knowing what to expect, I went in with few expectations. Turns out that Dead Ringer is a pretty good crime thriller with some major cases of mistaken identity going on.

Maggie grew up thinking she was the only surviving twin of an airplane crash that killed her mother and sister two weeks after her birth. She learns that's not exactly the case when she is reported as being "murdered" and dumped behind a bar on the beach. The murdered woman is a dead ringer for her, and Maggie figures out that it's her twin who really didn't die as earlier reported. The problem is that Maggie is still being stalked by her sister's killers, who apparently want her dead for some reason she doesn't quite understand. Since they screwed up with the first killing, they're under pressure to get it right the second time. Maggie is also pregnant from a one-night stand, and she doesn't want to lose her well-known husband who will know the child isn't his. Can she take the risk of telling him and driving him away, or will she get rid of the child and deal with that guilt for the rest of her life? Her "death" reveals a few facts she didn't know about her husband, so she decides to leave him and step into the role of her dead twin (since no one really knows she's the one that was actually killed). Maggie's twin has quite a bit of money as well as some strange emotional baggage that brings its own series of complications. Maggie needs to maintain the illusion long enough to find out why the killers want her dead, as well as what her sister was involved with that made her so much money.

Overall, the story was pretty good. Surprisingly, the main hitman is struggling with his own situation involving the murders, and really wants to put that life behind him. It doesn't change the fact that he's scummy, but there's still a bit of empathy there for him. I also enjoyed watching Maggie try to act like her sister she never met, and how to take over the mother role to an eight year old who knows something's a bit off, but likes the "new" version of mom much more than the old version. Things wrapped up well at the end, and I was glad that I had taken the time to dive into Dead Ringer...

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Super Duper Thriller, but maybe a bit too Violent, July 4, 2004

By 

Samantha McGee (Beautiful, Sunny Sarasota, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dead Ringer (Paperback)

I finally got to read the book that everyone in the salon where I work is talking about. By the time it came to me it was pretty dog-eared, but I took it home, despite the fact that the girl in the chair next to me had apparently left some of her lunch between the pages. So you can imagine how I approached Dead Ringer when I started to read it over breakfast the next morning.

Like the other girls at work, I was immediately drawn into the story and it was Saturday, so I was able to read away, and I did. As you know if you've read the reviews and the publisher's comments, Maggie Nesbitt is pregnant and her husband isn't the father of her baby. A killer murders her twin and the media mistakenly thinks that it was Maggie who was killed. Maggie takes advantage of this by becoming her sister. So now the killer goes after her.

This is a super thriller that had me hooked right from the beginning, as I said. No way could I put down. Even though there was one really yucky violent scene where Horace Nighthyde, the killer, runs over Maggie's sister's dead body in an alley. Totally too violent and not necessary. If not for that, and a couple other places where the violence approached the yuck level, I'd be glad to give Dead Ringer the five stars my friend, Ms. Lunch in the Pages, gave it here, but sadly I feel I have to take away a point for that. So in conclusion, a very good thriller, but maybe a touch too much violence, so only four stars from me.