Heartsick (Thorndike Press Large Print Crime Scene) [LARGE PRINT] (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: brass pillbox, oval pills, killer task force, Gretchen Lowell, Archie Sheridan, Susan Ward (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Chelsea Cain steps into a crowded, blood-soaked genre with Heartsick, a riveting, character-driven novel about a damaged cop and his obsession with the serial killer who...let him live. Gretchen Lowell tortured Detective Archie Sheridan for ten days, then inexplicably let him go and turned herself in. Cain turns the (nearly played out) Starling/Lecter relationship on its ear: Sheridan must face down his would-be killer to help hunt down another. What sets this disturbing novel apart from the rest is its bruised, haunted heart in the form of Detective Sheridan, a bewildered survivor trying to catch a killer and save himself. --Daphne Durham

Questions for Chelsea Cain

Amazon.com: Gretchen Lowell haunts every page of Heartsick. Even when she actually appears in the jail scenes with Sheridan, she reveals nothing, and yet it's obvious she's anything but one-dimensional. What is her story?

Cain: I purposely didn't reveal Gretchen's past, beyond a few unreliable hints. I thought there was a really interesting tension in not knowing what had driven this woman to embrace violence so enthusiastically. The less we know about killers' motives, the scarier they are. Maybe that's why people spend so much time watching 24-hour news channels that cover the latest horrible domestic murder. We want to understand why people kill. Because if we can peg it on something, we can tell ourselves that they are different than us, that we aren't capable of that kind of brutality. Plus this is the launch of a series and I thought it would be fun for readers to get to learn more about Gretchen as the series continues. I just finished Sweetheart, and I promise there's a lot more Gretchen to come.

Amazon.com: As a first-time thriller author, you've got to be elated to see early reviews evoke the legendary Hannibal Lecter. Did you anticipate readers to make that connection, or are there other serial series (on paper or screen) that inspired the story of Gretchen and Sheridan?

Cain: I thought that the connection to Lecter was inevitable since Heartsick features a detective who visits a jailed serial killer. But I wasn't consciously inspired by Silence of the Lambs (or Red Dragon, which is the Harris book it more accurately echoes). I grew up in the Pacific Northwest when the Green River Killer was at large, and I was fascinated by the relationship between a cop who'd spent his career hunting a killer (as many of the cops on the Green River Task Force did) and the killer he ends up catching. I'd seen an episode of Larry King that featured two of the Green River Task Force cops and they had footage of one of the cops with Gary Ridgway (the Green River Killer) in jail and they were chatting like old friends. They were both trying to manipulate one another. The cop wanted Ridgway to tell him where more bodies were. Ridgway is a psychopath and wanted to feel in control. But on the surface, they seemed like buddies having a drink together at a bar. It was kind of disturbing. I wanted to explore that. Making the killer a woman was a way to make the relationship even more intense. Making her a very attractive woman upped the ante considerably.

Amazon.com: Reading Heartsick I was actually reminded of some of my favorite books by Stephen King. Like him, you have an uncanny ability to make your geographical setting feel like a character all its own. Do you think the story could have happened in any other place than Portland?

Cain: Heartsick Hawaii would definitely have been a different book. (Archie Sheridan would have been a surfer. Susan would have worked at a gift shop. And Gretchen would have been a deranged hula girl.) I live in Portland, so obviously that played into my decision to set the book here. All I had to do was look out the window. Which makes research a lot easier. But I also think that the Pacific Northwest makes a great setting for a thriller, and it's not a setting that's usually explored. Portland is so beautiful. But it’s also sort of eerie. The evergreens, the coast, the mountains--the scale is so huge, and the scenery is so magnificent. But every year hikers get lost and die, kids are killed by sneaker waves on the beach, and mountain climbers get crushed by avalanches. Beauty kills. Plus it has always seemed like the Northwest is teeming with serial killers. I blame the cloud cover. And the coffee.

Amazon.com: In a lot of ways, Heartsick is more about the killer than the killings, and it’s hard not to suspect that Gretchen killed only to get to Sheridan. That begs the question: is the chase always better than the catch? As a writer, is it more exciting for you to imagine the pursuit--with its tantalizing push-and-pull--than the endgame?

Cain: The most interesting aspect of the book to me is the relationship between Archie and Gretchen. Really, I wrote the whole book as an excuse to explore that. The endgame is satisfying because it's fun to see all the threads come together, but it's the relationship that keeps coming back to the computer day after day.

Amazon.com: Your characters--Susan Ward in particular--are raw, tautly wired, imperfect but still have this irresistible tenderness. It's their motives and experiences that really drive the story and ultimately elevate it way beyond what you might expect going into a serial killer tale. How did you resist falling into something more formulaic? Did you know what shape Susan and the others would take going in?

Cain: I knew I wanted flawed protagonists. I'm a sucker for a Byronic hero. Thrillers often feature such square-jawed hero types, and I wanted a story about people just barely hanging on. The psychological component is really interesting to me, and I liked that Susan's neuroses are, in their own ways, clues. In many ways, I embraced formula. I love formula--there’s a reason it works. And I decided early on that I wasn't going to avoid clichés for the sake of avoiding them. Some clichés are great. My goal was not to write a literary thriller, but to take all the stuff I loved from other books and TV shows and throw them all together and then try to put my own spin on it. Heartsick is a pulpy page-turner with, I hope, a little extra effort put into the writing and the characters. Basically, I just wrote the thriller that I wanted to read.

(photo credit: Kate Eshelby)

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--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this outstanding thriller, the first in a new series, Cain (Confessions of a Teen Sleuth) puts a fresh spin on a scenario familiar to fans of Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs. When someone starts dumping the bodies of teenage girls around Portland, Ore., after soaking them in tubs of bleach, Archie Sheridan, a police detective addicted to pain killers, turns for help to Gretchen Lowell, an imprisoned serial killer who once tortured him (the big scar on his chest was shaped like a heart). Covering the crimes is reporter Susan Ward, a smart-alecky punk with pink hair and authority issues. The suspense builds as the narrative shifts between Sheridan's new case and his ordeal with Lowell, who in her own way is as memorable a villain as Hannibal Lecter. The damp Portland locale calls to mind the kind of Pacific Northwest darkness associated with Ted Bundy and Kurt Cobain. A vivid literary style lifts this well above the usual run of suspense novels. 200,000 first printing; author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Large Print Distribution (July 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594132747
• ISBN-13: 978-1594132742
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (175 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,251,550 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not all of the interwoven threads are strong enough to support the tapestry, September 6, 2007

By	T. Burger (Chicago) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Heartsick (Hardcover)

Detective Archie Sheridan spent ten years on The Beauty Killer task force, only to be caught by the beautiful killer herself, Gretchen Lowell (one of the most foul serial killers we've seen in quite a while) and viciously, hideously tortured by her. Archie survived, but just barely, and more than his mind was broken while he was in Gretchen's claws. Gretchen called 9-1-1 to save him when she was no longer capable of sustaining his life for her vile purposes, turned herself in, and that brings us to the present day - two years later. Archie is retired on medical leave. He is addicted to, amongst others, *Gretchen*, Vicodin, and Xanax. Gretchen, striking a plea bargain, sits in prison for the rest of her life.

Another serial killer has arisen in Portland, and Archie comes off medical leave to head up the new task force.

There were essentially three threads running through this story. That of Archie Sheridan's search for the "new" serial killer, that of the young pink-haired bohemian Susan who worked at the newspaper and who was covering the "human angle" of Archie being back on a task force looking for a serial killer, and that of Archie's tortured relationship with Gretchen.

Whenever a story contains multiple threads, the story runs the risk of having one or two of the threads outshine the other(s), and instead of a cohesive flow, the reader is left feeling off balance. Unfortunately, that's what happened here.

The relationship between Archie and Gretchen is told in two parts. I'll speak only of one, as I feel the other lies in the purview of a spoiler. Every so often, a chapter is inserted that takes us back two years to the ten days that Gretchen held Archie in captivity. Those chapters are without question the strongest chapters in the book. Not because of Gretchen's unspeakable cruelty, or the even how well Ms. Cain writes both characters in their respective situations - the purring Gretchen, the collapsing Archie. They're the strongest chapters because the chapters that cover the other threads are rather weak.

Because of the way Cain wrote the book, a comparison to Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs (and I'll speak only of the book for the purpose of this review) is unavoidable. Without question, the strongest scenes in the book involved Hannibal and Clarice. However, when Hannibal isn't around, the book didn't lose its sense of urgency. The other "thread" - hunting for "Buffalo Bill" - was riveting.

In comparison, neither Archie's pursuit of what they called "The After School Strangler", nor Susan's angle, held my attention. They simply weren't compelling. And if a serial killer is going to be anything, he/she HAS to be compelling. I found myself longing for Gretchen to come back into the picture. SHE was compelling, and I wanted to learn more about the twisted relationship that was at the core of this story.

The ending surprised me, and I was glad to see that Publisher's Weekly said that this is the first in a new series. Archie Sheridan's character *is* a fascinating one - with or without Gretchen. He just needs a better story to work with. Here's hoping that we have something more engrossing than "The After School Strangler" for Archie the next time around. Despite my concerns about this book, I would most certainly read the next book in the series.

3½ stars rounded up to four due to the unique presentation of a female serial killer. Gretchen's character was, *ahem*, bloody brilliant.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Close but not quite, October 19, 2007

By	Richard B. Schwartz (Columbia, Missouri USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Heartsick (Hardcover)

This is an interesting novel in that it features a female serial killer and a compelling, disturbing relationship between that killer and the detective who hunts her. Unfortunately, that story is told in flashbacks and the 'current' story (the search for another serial killer) is far less compelling. As the detective detects, a reporter reports, he searching for a killer, she for a story. The plot lines eventually come together and everything is tied into a tidy package.

Since the central concept (the female serial killer and her hunter/prey) is a good one, it should have been the focus of the novel. Unfortunately, it is not, though it might be utilized again in a future work. Thus, the problem is that while the b-story plot is reasonably tight it is not as engaging as most readers of suspense fiction will desire. Most will find the a-story plot far more interesting. Indeed, the novel comes alive whenever the female serial killer appears, but it pales when she is off stage.

The writing improves as the novel develops, but initially it is often crude with many non-sequiturs and strange variations in tone. Some sentences and paragraphs are outright amateurish though, as I said, the writing improves noticeably after the initial chapters.

The book is worth reading for the serial killer plot and there are elements here that suggest that the author could do something far more impressive the next time out.

19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Creepy...Chilling...Thrilling..., August 3, 2008

By	Karen Joan "Siren" (Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Heartsick (Mass Market Paperback)

HEARTSICK, a dark, twisted, disturbing psychological thriller by Chelsea Cain, is of a genre that I do not normally read. I do not like blood, gore, or torture, but somehow, this novel got under my skin and really surprised me. I could not put it down. I HAD to know what happened next, and I read it cover to cover in almost one sitting.

The writing is outstanding. I was immediately grabbed and drawn into this vivid, perverse world. The atmosphere created by the mood, voice, and tone is truly amazing, dark, and creepy. I had to keep looking outside my window to reassure myself that it was still daylight. I have not been this affected by the atmosphere of a book since INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE by Anne Rice many years ago. The characters are mesmerizing in a distressing, twisted way. Our "hero," detective Archie Sheridan, was the final victim of a truly brutal psychopathic female serial killer, Gretchen Lowell, whom he tracked for nearly 10 years. He is also the only victim to "survive" her torture, if you can call Archie's current life and state of mind survival. Although Gretchen is in a maximum security prison for life, she still pushes Archie's buttons, and he is still dancing to her sick, terrifying tune. The chapters detailing Archie's prolonged captivity and the supreme agony and brain-washing inflicted upon him by Gretchen nearly two years ago are deftly interwoven between the chapters describing Archie's hunt for a new serial killer. This very unique and successful device lets us glimpse inside Archie's warped and troubled mind as he works to solve his current case.

HEARTSICK is gripping, sinister, page-turner of a thriller that keeps you riveted until the final page. While you may think you have it all figured out, believe me, you don't. The twists, turns, shocks, and surprises carry on to the last words of the final page.