Amazon.com Review
An 11-year-old boy and his recently widowed mother face dangers both internal and external in Richard Bausch's bloody but psychologically acute thriller. After a freak bus accident leaves Jack Michaelson dead and his family destitute, Nora and Jason Michaelson just barely scrape by. When their black neighbor Edward Bishop offers to drop in on Jason each afternoon, Nora is grateful--until Bishop finds a series of increasingly frightening hate letters stuffed into his mailbox, signed by an organization calling itself the Virginia Front. "Watch your step with the white woman," they warn, and, "The woman & her son will burn with you." When two strangers break into Bishop's home, hog-tie, beat, and murder him, it's only natural that the police go looking for racists. Meanwhile, the real culprits go looking for Nora and Jason Michaelson.
Jack Michaelson was, as it turns out, a man of many secrets, and Nora and Jason's kidnappers expose them one by one. Even the villains here are fully fleshed out, their demons rivaled only by those of loneliness, family dysfunction, and greed. But make no mistake: this may be a "literary" thriller, but it's also a very scary one. The author of critically acclaimed short fiction and novels, including the comic gem Good Evening Mr. & Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea, Bausch proves himself here as adept at building narrative tension and suspense. The characters don't always have the depth--or the appealing quirkiness--of those in Bausch's previous work, but what this novel lacks for in subtlety, it makes up for in sheer ominous power.
From Library Journal
Bausch (Good Evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, LJ 8/96) is a widely admired writer of considerable talent. But he's off his mark in this tale of a family nearing bankruptcy, the death of the husband in an accident, and the terror visited upon his survivors when his "associates" come for the stolen smuggled goods he's hidden, reneging on his part of the deal. The plot is canned; the action, especially how two of the villains manage to do each other in, often strains credibility; and the characters seem to have wandered in variously from McCrumb, Pelecanos, and even Grisham novels. All that said, the writing itself is good, and the book is decidedly a page turner; in spite of (and perhaps even because of) its flaws, it's hard to put down. Surely not essential, but buy if the budget allows for Bausch fans and Grishamites.?Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, NY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
