The Pathology of Lies [Paperback]

Jonathon Keats (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1999

HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU WANTED TO KILL YOUR BOSS?

HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO FOR THAT CORNER OFFICE?

Gloria Greene is young, beautiful, brilliant, and dead serious about what she wants. She's used her many charms to fuel her blazing rise from intern to editor in chief of sophisticated Portfolio magazine. But is she really the killer who hacked the former editor to pieces and shipped his body parts cross-country by UPS? The prime suspect, Gloria shines in the media spotlight and FBI glare, enjoying the attentions of a daddy who loves her a little too much and the excessive worrying of her fabulous and neurotic friends. Now she covets the editorship of the legendary Algonquin magazine -- after all, nobody is a suspect forever...

For readers of Bright Lights, Big City and The Secret History comes an entertaining portrait of a devilishly ambitious modern woman, and a satirical look at the magazine world from an exciting new author.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gloria Greene is 27, beautiful and ambitiousAperhaps murderously so. When the head of San Francisco's Portfolio magazine is murdered (his body cut into pieces and mailed to subscribers throughout the country), Greene, the food editor who knows nothing about food, is promoted simultaneously to chief editor and suspect. The alleged "Bulk Mail Butcher" openly enjoys and exploits her notoriety, using her murder-suspect status to catapult herself into front-page celebrity. She humiliates the FBI and the entire magazine industry with her scandalous and paradoxical public prancing, announcing that she is "too guilty to be anything but free." Greene is outrageously narcissistic, extolling incest as the closest thing to self-love ("We taste each other. In each other we taste ourselves," she says of her ongoing affair with her father). There's a good deal here (including Greene's cold-blooded treatment of an employee just diagnosed HIV positive) that may offend, but first-time novelist Keats puts his real-life magazine experience (at SOMA and, currently, San Francisco magazine) to good use in fashioning this shrewd satire. Though his main character is very much a woman written by a man, Gloria is humorously exaggerated, both as a comic-book sexpot and murderous enfant terrible. And it is this wit that makes the tale as entertaining, glib and smug as it is. Keats's work here doesn't fulfill its overt, if improbable, Dostoyevskian aspirations, but it does succeed at being slick and sassy.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Well, here's an interesting twist on the psycho-killer mystery-thriller--very twisted. San Francisco Gen-Xer Gloria Greene is an editor, or claims she is, and lands the editorship of Portfolio. The FBI is interested in how she landed the job, as her former boss is appearing piecemeal in unwary consumers' UPS deliveries. Gloria's daddy is a surgeon, and she was brought up dissecting cadavers. Gloria's kleptomaniac friends try to relieve her stress with food, drink, and shopping; and one finally takes on dating the quack doctor^-freelance journalist who stalks Gloria. But the real pressure on Gloria is how to turn all of this into a Pulitzer. And author Keats makes it all work. He's deft, harsh, and flip, and his novel is a success, although it leaves a metallic aftertaste, like a bloody nose. It is definitely adult, and worth reading; but if Gloria "offers the best chance for my generation to rescue itself," as Keats states in an interview, some readers may move to New Zealand! Denise Blank

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (May 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446674451
• ISBN-13: 978-0446674454
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,696,776 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:

1.0 out of 5 stars empty book about a mean, obnoxious, lousy woman, May 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Pathology of Lies (Paperback)

I found this book superficially funny and superfically insightful, but nothing more. The lead character is the most un-woman woman in thought and deed that I have read in recent years. It's as if she is a man with a wig on. Nothing in her motives and her "funny" relationship with her Daddy (they're in love) rings true. I couldnt make it through this one and don't recommend it. I hoped to enjoy it being from the bay area, but no dice.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sex and Self Pity, August 17, 2002

By 

S. A. Waggoner "pettacom" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Pathology of Lies (Paperback)

Gloria Greene is smart -- or so she keeps insisting. In view of this, her capacity for banal friends, conduct, and conversation is truly amazing. Her displays of high I.Q. veer between telling us that she is Very Beautiful and reminding us (again) that she is Very Intelligent. She also spends a lot of time assuring us that it's a burden to be both Very Beautiful and Very Intelligent. If only her intelligence were allowed to animate any of her actions, thoughts, or dialogue, this might have been workable satire. As it is, the reader figures out the plot long before those plodders at the F.B.I., and is left wondering how a character as vapid as Gloria could have captured the author's imagination for more than five minutes.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Stunning Exploration of Hypocrisy, May 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Pathology of Lies (Paperback)

Several years ago, while in college, Keats published a column arguing that paperback books impugned the dignity of the written word. If you can't afford to buy a hardcover, Keats stated, you probably are better off not reading. Now, with the release of his direct-to-paperback novel, Keats appears to have changed his mind. Insight into the human condition, indeed.