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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Tenth thriller's plot almost too twisty to believe, April 22, 2004
We have read and generally enjoyed all nine of Margolin's previous outings, and find that this lawyer turned writer can craft a suspenseful story line along with the best of them. The books that have left us a little cold were ones where the author overpopulates with so many events and characters, doing justice to few of them, that hardly a reader can keep it all straight. Fortunately, in "Beauty", we have a cast of just a few main players to consider: Ashley Spencer, a teenager who witnesses the brutal murder of her girlfriend and her father, and just narrowly escapes herself; Joshua Maxfield, the alleged murderer who for much of the book is either a fugitive from the crime or in prison for it; Miles Van Meter, best-selling author of a true-life account of the Spencer murders and the impact on his comatose sister; Casey Van Meter, yet another victim who after Terri Spencer (Ashley's mother, who was away during the first attack) is killed in her sight, is struck on the head and spends years in a coma (ergo, the sleeping beauty!); Randy Coleman, Casey's soon to be ex-husband from a mistaken quickie marriage; and Jerry Philips, Ashley's attorney, who for a while takes almost too much personal interest in this whole matter. Which one of these is really the killer? We're lead down many a path before all becomes clearer toward the end. Even with the big twist that gets to be a little foreseeable, a further twist right at the very end is good for a pretty shocking climax. Interesting courtroom drama helps break up the more violent action of much of the novel. Most will find Margolin's latest a pleasing puzzler. We were not totally enamored by the telling of the story through flashbacks alternating with current time scenes where Miles is entertaining a crowd at a book signing. But the plot proceeds at a good pace, the characters are portrayed well enough, and the ending will catch many off guard. Guess that's what a thriller is all about!
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good, but falls a bit short of ther usual 5 stars, April 4, 2004
Take a great mystery writer, a complicated plot, engaging characters and unusual observational insights into people, places and culture and I will probably stay up all night reading. Phillip Margolin has been on my "must read" list for a half dozen years, and "Sleeping Beauty" will keep him there a bit longer. The characters and the story move along at the usual pace, but the plot seems to develope holes and never quite satisfies in the end. Maybe I have set my "Margolin" meter too high, but I was expecting a bigger bang for the buck. That is not to say you shouldn't read this latest attempt, it deserves the attention, and I'm sure all writers stumble occasionally, so I suggest you read it, enjoy it for what it does deliver and know that the next Margolin will most likely be racheted up a few notches. To me Phillip Margolin is still in a league with Lehane, Stephen White, Steve Martini, The Kellermans, and about a dozen others who keep me up late at night.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You Will Lose Sleep Reading This Beauty, April 29, 2004
Phillip Margolin has never disappointed me yet with his novels, and with Sleeping Beauty, his streak continues. In this novel things are seldom what they seem and it would spoil the read for me to reveal the twists and turns that this story takes. The straight forward story is that Ashley Spencer, a high school soccer star has a friend to her house for a sleep over following a big game and awakens to the most terrifying experience one can imagine. A masked stranger is in their room. He ties up Ashley and takes her friend into another room where he rapes and murders her. Returning to her room, he says, "I'll see you later" and she hears him go down to the kitchen. Her father, who is the only parent in the house that night crawls into her room suffering from multiple stab wounds and using the last of his energy frees fer from her bonds and she escapes out her window. This appears to be a random event until Ashley's mother is taking a creative writing course at a nearby private school in which Ashley has enrolled and hears the instructor read a passage from a piece of writing that describes the event that her daughter has gone through and also includes a part of what happened that received no publicity. She eventually determines that no one in the class wrote the story and that it was drafted by the instructor, Joshua Maxwell, himself. Her suspicions are aroused to the point where she confides them to the Dean of the school who checks out the instructor's background and calls the mother suggesting a meeting to discuss what she has found. While jogging on the school grounds near where the meeting is taking place, Ashley hears a scream and decides to investigate. What she sees as she peers in the window are the bodies of two women lying on the floor (the Dean and Ashley's mother) and Joshua Maxwell standing over them with a bloody knife in his hands. He sees her as she turns and runs for her life with Maxwell in pursuit. She escapes, the story is out, Maxwell is pursued and eventually arrested and brought to trial. And the story is JUST BEGINNING. Margolin uses an interesting vehicle in telling the story. The Dean, Casey Van Meter, was not murdered, but ended up in a coma. Her brother, Miles Van Meter has written a book about the events leading up to her being in the coma entitled, Sleeping Beauty. A continuing thread in this book is his presence at a book signing where he reads from the book and answers questions about it. I will leave it to the reader to explore the intracies of this very well told tale. It is an undertaking that will be well worth the effort.
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