Security: A Novel [Paperback]

Stephen Amidon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 2009

There isn't much crime in Stoneleigh, Massachusetts. It’s a college town, a mountain getaway for the quietly rich,

where the average burglar alarm is set off by foraging wildlife. So when Edward Inman, the owner of Stoneleigh Sentinel, gets a latenight false alarm from the home of Doyle Cutler, one of his wealthiest clients, Edward thinks nothing of it—not until a local student, Mary Steckl, claims that she was sexually assaulted at Cutler’s house.

 

Edward soon finds himself drawn to Mary’s story, even though the rest of the town doubts her, including his wife, a rising politician who has made security the platform of her mayoral campaign. While homework from a creative writing class is leaked as evidence of a dark secret between Mary and her father, Edward’s investigations lead him to his old girlfriend, Kathryn Williams, whose teenage son may hold the key to the truth about that night.

 

From the author of Human Capital, Security is a timely, wry, and riveting story of adults and children, secret lives and civic

culture, suspicion and sexual hysteria. It confirms Stephen Amidon as a master of the art and one of the foremost chroniclers of American life today.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An anatomist of contemporary American anomie, Amidon (Human Capital) follows, in this skillfully executed if not quite devastating novel, the serpentine events surrounding an alleged sexual assault in a sleepy Massachusetts college town. Edward Inman runs a security company and one night is called to the mansion of Doyle Cutler, a wealthy client. Later, college student Mary Steckl accuses Cutler of sexually abusing her at his home that evening. The police and the locals assume shes covering for her father, a widower whose heavy drinking has gotten him in trouble with the law before. Marys plight quickly envelops others, including her classmate, Angela, who is sleeping with her English professor, a guest at the Cutler mansion on the night in question; Kathryn, a divorcée who embarks on an affair with an old love whose wife is running for mayor; and Conor, Kathryns troubled son and the only witness to what really happened to Mary. The reader stands by for the human catastrophe that will inevitably ensue, but despite its nuanced depiction of smalltown life and propulsive plotting, the novel fails to achieve a truly tragic dimension. (Feb.)
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Review

Praise for Human Capital

 

“A gripping, troubling, and incisive portrait of the way we live now . . . Has the ambitious sweep and narrative power of a nineteenth-century novel.” —Tom Perrotta, author of Little Children

“Like Rosellen Brown’s Before and After and Scott Spencer’s Endless Love, Human Capital grounds [its] plot in meticulously observed social details, its relentless pacing in some shrewd psychological insights. And Mr. Amidon proves himself a nimble storyteller, providing the reader with a solid, literate and consistently compelling tale.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Amidon’s novel is a wonderfully wicked satire on a twenty-first-century gilded age . . . His book is more than just one family’s story. It’s a portrait of a whole society caught in a dead end that everyone insists will lead somewhere after all.” —Michael Shelden, Chicago Tribune

“Amidon has achieved the rare alchemy of creating a novel charged with suspense from the lives of ordinary suburban families; it’s also an unflinching social commentary that has the potential to endure as a clear and literate portrait of its time.” —Stephanie Merritt, The Observer (London)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (February 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374257116
• ISBN-13: 978-0312429317
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,680,892 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen Amidon was born in Chicago. He is the author of Subdivision, a book of short stories, and six novels, including The New City and Human Capital, which Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post chose as one of the five best novels of 2004. His books have been published in sixteen countries, and he is a regular contributor of essays and criticism to newspapers and magazines in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. He lived and worked in London for twelve years before returning to the United States in 1999. The Sublime Engine: A Biography of the Human Heart, which he co-authored with his brother Tom, was released in 2011 and selected by the Wall Street Journal as one of the five best health and medicine titles of the year. Amidon's next book, Something Like The Gods, will be released on June 5th, 2012. For more information, visit stephenamidon.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Astute Observations, April 15, 2009

By 

Cary B. Barad (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Security: A Novel (Paperback)

I had very high expectations of the author of the well-received, "Human Capital" and I wasn't disappointed. Au contraire. This novel covers many themes well: politics, adultery, class snobbery, law enforcement, parenting, real estate, addictions and deep emotional conflicts in a small but developing suburban college town. To our benefit, the characters are well-drawn and true-to-life--they all have interesting stories to tell us-with a good dose of mystery and suspense.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Insecure, June 9, 2009

By 

Stephen T. Hopkins (Oak Park, Illinois) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Security: A Novel (Paperback)

Stephen Amidon's new novel, Security, explores many aspects of personal insecurity and the ways in which each of us remains fundamentally insecure, no matter how strong we've made our defenses. Protagonist Edward Inman owns a security company and leads a comfortable life in Massachusetts with his wife, Meg, an alderman running for mayor. Their relationship has become loveless, and after Ed reconnects with his old flame, Kathryn, recently divorced, he becomes involved in her life and issues, crumbling the already weak foundations of his own. A broader cast of characters, most of whom are unlikeable for one reason or another, exhibit behaviors that disclose the range of ways in which we try to overcome the insecurity that we want to hide from others. Amidon's writing is superb, and this satire of modern life and relationships can be read with detachment or with an identification with one or more of the behaviors these characters as we try to find happiness or acceptance with others. Security is a timely novel by a talented writer.

Rating: Three-star (Recommended)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Kathryn had learned that the small favors were as likely to be denied as the big ones.", January 18, 2010

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Security: A Novel (Paperback)

Secrets and lies are at the heart of Amidon's effective novel, the drama of public accusation and private revenge in the sleepy college town of Stoneleigh, Massachusetts, when Mary Steckl accuses a wealthy local man of attacking her one night at his luxurious estate. Unfortunately for Mary, her father, Walt, is an object of derision since an electrical accident cause irreversible damage to his body. Since the death of his wife from cancer a few years earlier, Walt's drinking has kept him in the public scrutiny. A student at Mt. Stoneleigh College, Mary is a quiet girl, but her accusations bring out a pettiness in her fellow students that burns like a forest fire. Soon everyone takes a side, Mary's credulity hampered by her father's very public blunders.

The story is told primarily through the perspective of Edward Inman, owner of Stoneleigh Security, a private security business that has prospered from the increased paranoia of average citizens. It is Edward who first realizes something is amiss at the home of Doyle Cutler, when he responds to a so-called false alarm and later picks up a stumbling, inebriated Connor Williams walking away from Doyle's estate. Connor is the son of Inman's former lover, Kathryn, a woman Edward has been unable to purge from his life and heart in spite of his best intentions. Then there is the charismatic professor, Stuart Symes, who is having an affair with one of his bright students and is teaching a class Mary attends in creative writing. Stuart is somehow connected to the current scandal, a situation that imperils his reputation and case for tenure and outrages his students.

Amidon skillfully blends these disparate characters in a believable plot of small town life where controversy breeds passionate responses and gossip spreads without regard to accuracy. Something is terribly wrong in Stoneleigh, important men's reputations on the line, Mary caught in the middle, her innocence forfeit as the stories swirl unabated and Doyle protects himself from scandal. From Edward's loveless marriage to Mary's motherless home, the author captures the uneasy tensions of daily dramas and the controversy that brings scandal to the surface in a small town. Lives are irrevocably changed, hysteria rampant, the truth as elusive as a man without an opinion. Luan Gaines/2010.