Customer Reviews

Die for You (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

"Beautiful Lies" was a very good book. I also enjoyed "Black Out." But "Die For You" is a mess. Stay away. This book will irritate, frustrate and ultimately annoy you. It is not well written. The reader has trouble figuring out who is narrating each section as Unger breezily moves from character to character. Who is speaking here, you wonder. Is it Isabel Raines or is it her sister or is Marcus or is it Detective Grady? Who's on first? And of course, Unger's characterizations aren't credible either.

Besides the superficial subplots, which needlessly add padding to the book, and Unger's improbable plotting, those aren't the only flaws to wear a reader down. No, that's not the worse part. In Isabel Raines (a.k.a. Isabel Connelly), Unger has created one of the most unsympathetic, unlikable, immature and downright stupid heroines to ever grace the pages of a suspense novel.

Isabel is worse than a bad horror film heroine. You know the type. She's the one who makes you want to yell at the movie screen as she, against all logic and common sense, stupidly steps over bleeding, dying bodies to walk into the same dark room the victims came out of and where everyone but the heroine knows the killer lurks. But then along with all the other cliches in this book, Isabel just wants to know "why" her con-man husband did what the did to her. O.K., I guess you'll just have to dodge a few knife thrusts and bullets along the way.

Here are examples. In one gory scene, Isabel finds her husband, Marcus, a.k.a. Kristof, just after he's nearly decapitated a former lover, Camilla. There's blood everywhere, including all over his wet hands. Hey, most anyone with half-a-brain, would run the other way. After all, Marcus is tying up loose ends and it's a bloody business, too. Inexplicably, Isabel isn't frightened enough to turn and run. And even more incredibly, Marcus doesn't kill Isabel there. (Too bad, as it might have spared the reader another 170 pages or so). So despite the gore and Marcus' warning to stay away, Isabel's not one so easily dissuaded by such trifles like a horrific murder. She ignores Marcus and incredulously decides to follow, "I'll find you or die trying," she says.

In another example much later, Marcus is shooting at Isabel who has magically slipped out of her restraints to escape from him. At least she's finally smart enough to run from Marcus when he's shooting at her. Isabel hides. Marcus calls to her, "Isabel, let's talk. I'll put the gun down." From her hiding place, she sees him put the gun down. True to form as the dullest knife in the drawer, Isabel comes out of hiding, even though her "every instinct...screams to stay still, to stay hidden...." Yes, by now, even the most hapless reader knows that Isabel's not going to listen to her inner smart self. No, Unger, has instead plotted and drawn Isabel to be controlled by her inner stupid self. To most any dimwit, it's obvious Marcus is not to be trusted. After all, he's left a trail of mayhem, dead bodies, wrecked lives, theft and betrayal behind. But no, it's not enough for Isabel. She still wants to know "Why" Marcus did what he did, especially to her. So she predictably comes out of hiding. And of course, Marcus pulls out another gun and shoots her. (Hey but unfortunately, Isabel survives giving credence to the old adage that 'God protects fools and drunks').

The 'why' of things thematically runs throughout this book, not just with Isabel but with every characterization drawn by Unger. Why did Marcus do what he did to her? Why, why, why? And why am I still reading this book?

And so, it's the 'why' of things that eludes Isabel. In the story, Isabel's a novelist. She wants to know "how the pieces fit together." Too bad Unger the novelist, didn't figure that one out, too.

So, since Unger failed to give Isabel her answer. I have an answer for Isabel. Marcus did what he did to you because you're so stupid that he could.

Here's a great premise: What if you were a happily married woman whose seemingly perfect husband went off to work one morning...and vanished? Well, you'd go nuts--even after you began to learn a few odd things about Mr. Right. You'd hound the authorities, maybe crash a crime scene--which, of course, would make you look as suspicious as your missing spouse. Then you'd decide to solve the mystery yourself--even if that decision could get you killed....

Lisa Unger is a new favorite of mine. I discovered her last year with BLACKOUT, and I could hardly wait for this one. The emphasis here is more on plot and action than character development, but it's a good choice if you're in the mood for fast-paced, well-written suspense. Try it.

New Yorker Isabel Raine has made peace with the single life when she meets her charming, somewhat enigmatic Prague-born husband, Marcus. After five years, the romance is still fresh, Isabel a much published author, Marcus a successful software designer. Why then does Marcus walk away from their home one morning never to return? After a night of anxiety, fear and rage, Isabel begins a desperate search for her husband that leaves her reeling and distraught. After a run-in with the FBI at Marcus' office, a brutal attack and a concussion, the trashing of her home and assorted dead bodies, Isabel balks at revealing all her secrets to the police, crashing blindly through crime scenes in search of clues. Isabel's intransigence draws everyone in her family into a vortex of violence, all put at risk as Isabel compulsively races from one conclusion to another. While her stubbornness may ultimately reveal the answers she needs, Isabel's hubris does not make for a likable protagonist.

Luckily, Isabel's impetuous and provocative actions are tempered by her sister, Linda, an artist/photographer with a healthy marriage and two children. But even Linda has feet of clay in this tale, both girls traumatized by a childhood incident that haunts them still. In contrast to Isabel's abrasiveness, Linda is all the more sympathetic, bravely supporting her younger sister in spite of an unraveling personal life, one character's flaws balanced against another's. In an attempt to tether the plot to the possible, the voice of a young detective injects another perspective, Grady Crowe battling his own demons and marital disharmony while chasing Isabel from one crime scene to another. Perhaps it is the author's choice of protagonist-as-writer that burdens the story with too much detail and not enough nuance, the sometimes tedious rationalization of aberrant behavior in service of plot.

Without doubt, Unger is a talented storyteller. Although this bizarre cast- successful New York women, a rogue husband, a deranged stalker and a female adversary with blood in her eye- requires some suspension of belief, the novel exhibits the energy of Unger's other work: I find it necessary to make a conscious decision to follow Unger's lead. With unusual plot twists and the random threats of suspicious characters, count on Unger to deliver a compelling version of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Would I like more depth in her characters? Sure. But I'll settle for a few hours of a fast-paced mystery from a very consistent writer. Luan Gaines/2009.

Every time I ever say this, I get dirty looks or scorn poured upon me... but to get the jist of my review across here, I kind of have to tackle this issue. Women and men are different. We dont write the same, think the same, and our ideals are often not in concert with one another. "Die For You", by Unger, brings this home. Its a very well written thriller that deserves to be brought up when conversations of such authors as Coben or his ilk are taking place. In my reading experience every single one of these thrillers I have tackled has been written by a male author. (the kind of book I am referring to is based primarily upon the Hitchcock ideal 'North By Northwest or The Man who Knew Too Much', where a lone protagonist is battling unknown forces while his life is thrown to the wolves.

Here, we have a very strong female heroine... She is an incredibly tough person, who's mind is totally insane to me. I could not relate to her decisions, I cringed at her endless doubt, her self flagellation, her "I am woman hear me Roar" attitude. I wanted to be as far away from this beast as possible. Unger did not take the Hitchcock or Coben tradition character and just turn the man into a woman. If this IS a woman, and I totally 100% do not understand her.

Aside from being knocked for a loop over the character Isabel Connelly whom I have gone on about, this is a very first rate story. Its unique, it takes a lot of strained belief on the part of the reader, or the old traditional horror device, you know, when your sitting in the theater and people all around you are yelling at the girl not to do something, this happens a lot here.

One giant flaw that the novel doesn't quite get over, is that it constantly shifts from character to character and often the author goes up to 3-4 pages before she lets us know which one it is. Its like Unger purposefully avoids giving any hint as to which person she is looking through the eyes of, attempting to withhold the knowledge for as long as possible.

The plot itself surrounds Isabel and her husband who disappears along with all of her and her extended families money. Its unclear at first if he took it and ran, or shady organization did it. But soon goons, police, family, are all pushing this story of discovery along. I would recommend this story, its good, you have no idea where its going, and other than a VERY shrill set of female protagonists (both sisters are crazy), its a well crafted story... Well its a totally well crafted story if you like your protagonist totally insane.

The plot of the story sounds promising but this is where you get sucked in, because the author goes all over the place with the telling of this story. Ms. Unger goes from present to past and she intermingles characters in the telling of this story so much that your head could spin. One minute you are reading a character in the present and then you are reliving a memory from a different character but you had no clue that she changed characters because everyone is from a 1st person account. It totally ruins the flow of the story and is most annoying. Yes, the idea that a woman would want to find out why her husband betrayed her is believable but the way that she proceeds to go about is, well, totally unbelievable not to mention it is beyond comprehension the danger that she puts not only herself but her entire family into. The main character is not likeable at all and in a way you really can't feel too sorry for her with the ridiculous way she acts(downright childish at times)in trying to get answers to the question, how could he have done this to ME!? The author tries to make her out to be a combination of Charlie's Angels, Wonder Woman & Bionic Woman all rolled into one. I'm sorry, but what the author may have started out to do with this book and what ended up as the final product is just not worth wasting your time on. I took this book out of the library after reading some of the reviews on it, thank goodness I did not spend a penny on this book. Yes, there will be those of you who will say, well, why didn't you just put the book down if it was so bad, and yes, I too asked that very same question of myself, but I just had to see how the author would have this story turn out, if she could manage to make some kind of point to it all, and she could not. This is hands down one of the worst books that I have ever read.

I was at first enjoying the book, but as it progressed, I found the heroine, Isabel, completely irrational, annoying and stupid. She made decisions that a rational person does not make, decisions that get real people killed. I wanted this book to end.

I have enjoyed other Lisa Unger novels including Beautiful Lies, Sliver of Truth, and Black Out. They held together much better than "Die For You".

SPOILER ALERTS:
There were just TOO many moments the reader was being asked to suspend their disbelief and continue on into this story. I know this is fiction but there is a saturation point where enough is enough.

1. Isabel Connelly is a very successful novelist before she meets Marcus Raine with her own agent, publicist, accounting firm. Yet she dumps her accounting firm without a word of explanation to them and takes on a new firm she never checks out because her new husband tells her to.
2. She blindly signs all papers her husband puts in front of her without ever reading them.
3. She blindly accepts it when Marcus has an affair, never follows up on it, and never holds it against him.
4. Her husband's office office is trashed, three people she knows that Marcus has worked with are killed (she never expresses any regret or word of sympathy about any of the three) and she is knocked unconscious, hospitalized, and all she can worry about is that her wedding ring was taken.
5. She finds her husband after he just brutally kills another woman and she still lies to the police, continues to try to track him down and continues with her obsession of wanting to know "Why?".
6. After Marcus shoots Isabel once, she is stupid enough to put herself right back in a position to be shot by him again.

7. "Marcus" is super con man, murderer. He has affairs behind his wife's back, still has sex with the killer Czech woman from his past. But Isabel was his dream woman. He regrets leaving her and can't resist sending one last note trying to explain himself - this from the stone cold killer who has killed who knows how many people, shot his own brother (after informing on him to the police and having him sent to prison) and conned who knows how many people (including Isabel's sister and brother-in-law) out of their life savings. Boy, this is a man I would want to follow to the ends of the earth.

8. There are just so many different side stories - with Isabel's past, her sister and her indiscretions, Marcus' past, Marcus' new con, Isabel's agent/best friend, the cop, the cop's partner, the guide in Prague -- too, too much and none of it done that well. It seemed like everyone in the book had to be fleshed out, rather than focusing on the main characters and doing well-written character studies of them.

At one point Isabel says "I'd rather die in the dark alley than bask a lifetime ignorant in the light". It seemed the whole book was a treatise on being an ignorant, ungrateful, obsessive woman.

Unger is a good writer. This could have been a good book - but wasn't.

NOTE: I did enjoy the characters of Trevor, the nephew, and Grady and Jesamyn, the two New York cops.

Some novelists write fine thrillers, some write memorable character studies. Lisa Unger has tried too hard to do both. Interior monologues and deep background reflection disrupt the clean flow of action, delivering a frustrating read. The plot is there and it's a good one, but you pick it up only in brief spurts, amid long detours into the lives and memories of the protagonist.... and her sister, and other family members. Even the most patient reader deserves some economy and a coherent narrative flow.

First time reading her. My favorite authors are Tess Gerritsen and Sydney Sheldon, just to give you an idea of what i like. So i picked this up and it sounded great. The beginning of the book was great and fast paced. By the middle you're trying to figure who's talking and what's going on and where is everyone going and why. The whole plot centers around why the husband disappeared, and by the time the book ends there's no new reason as to why. The last 3rd of the book was horrible and a waste of time with nothing new to discover.

I've been a fan of Lisa Unger since her first book "Beautiful Lies" was published and I very much enjoyed her next two books. This book however was not up to par with her previous works.

The storyline has a good premise, what if your husband leaves for work and then disappears? What happens when you learn that your life for the past 5 years has been a total lie? This is exactly what happens to Isabel Raine; Marcus Raine goes to work, disappears and leaves the wreckage of all his lies and deceptions behind. Unable to understand what has happened Isabel begins to look for answers and puts herself and everyone around her at risk.

There were several things I did not like about this book, the main one was the protagonist. I just didn't like Isabel very much, for a successful bestselling novelist she does some really bone head things. There were too many subplots; her sister Linda's perfect marriage that is not quite so ideal; Detective Crowe's marital problems; the death of the father that haunts both Isabel and Linda. Although I understand the question of trust is a huge part of the story it just seemed a little overdone and melodramatic. I don't like when a book tells instead of shows, where two characters explain everything by having that confessional conversation, I find that to be a cop-out, it's just too easy. Perhaps my two biggest problems involved the Prologue. Why write a prologue to a suspense novel that takes away all the suspense? Part of the fun of this kind of book is the question of what is going to happen. This thrill is gone from the start since we know who is telling the story. If you do write a prologue it should match up with the scene it foretells; the two scenes were completely different and that really annoyed me.

The book moves pretty quickly and the writing is generally very good, so I will probably read Ms. Unger's next book. I'd also like to see a book that is a little different than the theme she has written about in all four of these books- although they are different stories they seem to be following the same pattern, I'd really like to see her tackle a different premise.