Bob Stark returns to Denver after 18 years in Southeast Asia to discover that the mother he buried before he left is dead again. He attends her new funeral and sees . . . himself Is his other self a hoaxer? A doppelganger? Or is something more sinister going on? Even worse, two men who appear to be government agents are hunting him for no reason that he can fathom. With the help of a baffling young woman Bob meets in a coffee shop, he uncovers the unimaginable truth.
More Deaths Than One
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Pat Bertram is a native of Colorado and a lifelong resident. When the traditional publishers stopped publishing her favorite type of book -- character and story driven novels that can't easily be slotted into a genre -- she decided to write her own. More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire are Bertram's first two novels.
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More About the Author
Pat Bertram is a native of Colorado. When the traditional publishers stopped publishing her favorite type of book -- character and story driven novels that can't easily be slotted into a genre -- she decided to write her own. Second Wind Publishing liked her style and published four of Bertram's novels: Light Bringer, Daughter Am I, More Deaths Than One, and A Spark of Heavenly Fire. Second Wind also published Grief: The Great Yearning, a compilation of letters, blog posts, and journal entries Pat Bertram wrote while struggling to survive her first year of grief after the death of her soul mate. Bertram blogs about writing and the writing life at http://ptbertram.wordpress.com
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By John J. Beck
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Pat Bertram grabbed my attention at the outset and didn't let go. The complex and intriguing plot is not difficult to follow, just impossible to predict. Characters are enigmatic but believable. Settings are appropriately described but not overly so. Each chapter begs for the next to be read without ending each chapter with a "teaser". Romance is steamy but tastefully done. There's science fiction involved which is not so far out that some readers have even questioned how much could be true.
Like the last book of Job, the epilogue brings some poetic justice and adds a bit of meaning to the plot, but the real story stands even without the epilogue. There is not a paragraph which is not well written. Highly recommended.
Like the last book of Job, the epilogue brings some poetic justice and adds a bit of meaning to the plot, but the real story stands even without the epilogue. There is not a paragraph which is not well written. Highly recommended.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Picture this: You return to the U.S. after an extended overseas trip and who do you see? You. Not in the mirror, but out there in the world. And bad guys are looking for you, the you in the mirror while the other you goes about his life with the past you remember.
Welcome to the world of Robert Stark, who goes by the name "Bob," the starkly mannered, dream-haunted protagonist of Pat Bertram's intricate novel about a man who returns to the United States after 18 years in southeast Asia only to find that he appears to be under investigation by a shadowy government or quasi-government agency.
Welcome to the world of Kerry Casillas, the good natured and intuitive-reader-of-people waitress who works the graveyard shift at the Rimrock Coffee Shop in Denver where Bob Stark comes to escape from his nightmares.
It will not take you long to guess that Bob and Kerry are likely to become increasingly significant in each other's lives. In this matter, your guess will be correct. You will be tempted to guess again, primarily about where this mystery is heading and how, logically, there can be more than one Bob Stark, and just what it is that the man sitting there in the Rimrock Coffee Shop reading his mother's obituary in the newspaper has or has done that might place him within the cross-hairs of increasingly rough operatives.
The obituary is problematic, for Bob Stark's mother died and was buried years ago. Keeping himself well hidden within lilac bushes, Bob attends the burial service at Mountain View Cemetary. His brother Jackson is there. Robert Stark is also there, married to Bob's former girl friend Lorena. "Bob stared," writes Bertram. "The other Robert Stark seemed to have aged a bit faster than he, seemed more used, but the resemblance could not be denied. He was looking at himself."
Also there, just past the casket is a new headstone for Bob's long-dead mother. Bob wonders "What the hell is going on?"
When you reach the end of the book, you will see just how perfectly the puzzle pieces of Bob Stark's dangerous and shattered world fit together. Until then, you will ask the same questions Bob Stark is asking, and you will experience the same limbo he feels as the answers elude him. All of this will happen because Bertram has crafted a suspenseful story where everything that's real isn't what it seems.
Welcome to the world of Robert Stark, who goes by the name "Bob," the starkly mannered, dream-haunted protagonist of Pat Bertram's intricate novel about a man who returns to the United States after 18 years in southeast Asia only to find that he appears to be under investigation by a shadowy government or quasi-government agency.
Welcome to the world of Kerry Casillas, the good natured and intuitive-reader-of-people waitress who works the graveyard shift at the Rimrock Coffee Shop in Denver where Bob Stark comes to escape from his nightmares.
It will not take you long to guess that Bob and Kerry are likely to become increasingly significant in each other's lives. In this matter, your guess will be correct. You will be tempted to guess again, primarily about where this mystery is heading and how, logically, there can be more than one Bob Stark, and just what it is that the man sitting there in the Rimrock Coffee Shop reading his mother's obituary in the newspaper has or has done that might place him within the cross-hairs of increasingly rough operatives.
The obituary is problematic, for Bob Stark's mother died and was buried years ago. Keeping himself well hidden within lilac bushes, Bob attends the burial service at Mountain View Cemetary. His brother Jackson is there. Robert Stark is also there, married to Bob's former girl friend Lorena. "Bob stared," writes Bertram. "The other Robert Stark seemed to have aged a bit faster than he, seemed more used, but the resemblance could not be denied. He was looking at himself."
Also there, just past the casket is a new headstone for Bob's long-dead mother. Bob wonders "What the hell is going on?"
When you reach the end of the book, you will see just how perfectly the puzzle pieces of Bob Stark's dangerous and shattered world fit together. Until then, you will ask the same questions Bob Stark is asking, and you will experience the same limbo he feels as the answers elude him. All of this will happen because Bertram has crafted a suspenseful story where everything that's real isn't what it seems.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The first three pages of "More Deaths than One" have to constitute a serious contender for the best opening scene of a novel. Two main characters are introduced, a garrulous waitress and a taciturn hot-chocolate customer. They meet. She talks, a lot. He reads the paper. "And Lydia Loretta Stark was dead. Again." With two such immediately real and appealing characters, and a line like that, I'd challenge anyone not to want to keep turning the pages.
And then, even though the characters are already fully formed, the author proceeds to add layer upon layer of depth and history. The taciturn Bob has nightmares, paints pictures with mysteries inside, and tells stories as if he's reading them from a book. His faithful sidekick Kerry teases out information and ideas. And a hint of the truth pokes its head up enticingly. I wondered, could he? Maybe...
Particularly well done is the scene near the end where the real story unfolds. Kerry switches from misplaced to well-placed anger with hardly a pause, her reaction so humanly believable, and the truth so strange it leaves the reader wondering, even after it's been told.
Read this book in the knowledge that Pat Bertram is a skilled story-teller. No hint, no strangeness, no odd surprise or character is wasted, but everything points to and leads to the final conclusion. A masterful tale that truly fulfills the promise of its beginning.
And then, even though the characters are already fully formed, the author proceeds to add layer upon layer of depth and history. The taciturn Bob has nightmares, paints pictures with mysteries inside, and tells stories as if he's reading them from a book. His faithful sidekick Kerry teases out information and ideas. And a hint of the truth pokes its head up enticingly. I wondered, could he? Maybe...
Particularly well done is the scene near the end where the real story unfolds. Kerry switches from misplaced to well-placed anger with hardly a pause, her reaction so humanly believable, and the truth so strange it leaves the reader wondering, even after it's been told.
Read this book in the knowledge that Pat Bertram is a skilled story-teller. No hint, no strangeness, no odd surprise or character is wasted, but everything points to and leads to the final conclusion. A masterful tale that truly fulfills the promise of its beginning.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
an intriguing tale of what can happen when the wrong people are given...
In More Deaths Than One, Pat Bertram has woven an intriguing tale of what can happen when the wrong people are given control over another's life. Read more
Published 5 months ago by lvgaudet
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pat Bertram At Her Finest!
I laughed with Pat while reading Daughter Am I, was scared by what happened in A Spark of Heavenly Fire, sighed with Pat's Light Bringer Check out my reviews on author's other... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Glenda A Bixler
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting idea - disappointing book
The idea behind this book was intriguing and the author did a good job of creating the how and the why. Read more
Published 24 months ago by mmmjnag
4.0 out of 5 stars
Shocker at the beginning--and the end!
If you are going to buy the Kindle edition please be ready to also read the paperback. I listened to it first on text to speech off of my Kindle. Read more
Published on June 7, 2009 by Amazon reviewer
4.0 out of 5 stars
Scattered, but Compelling
I agonized over how to review this book. Over a year or so, I read her first chapter a few times and, as writer myself, wondered how she'd solve the opening dilemma... Read more
Published on May 29, 2009 by Ken Coffman
4.0 out of 5 stars
More Reads Than One
Bob Stark is a man searching for the truth in this psychological mystery. After 18 years living abroad, the Vietnam veteran returns to his hometown of Denver, Colorado and... Read more
Published on May 8, 2009 by Jill Anderson
5.0 out of 5 stars
More Deaths Than One can Only adaquately Be Described As Superb
You have got to read this novel, More Deaths Than One. Who has stolen Bob Stark's identity? Why is he being pursued by the henchmen of a shadowy multinational corporation? Read more
Published on April 22, 2009 by Steven Clark Bradley
