מאת Lisa Unger
A thrilling novel from New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger about the hunt for a missing girl and one community’s intricate yet fragile bonds.
“[A] nail-biting nuanced whodunit.”—People
Everybody knows everybody in The Hollows, a quaint, charming town outside of New York City. It’s a place where neighbors keep an eye on one another’s kids, where people say hello in the grocery store, and where high school cliques and antics are never quite forgotten. As a child, Maggie found living under the microscope of small-town life stifling. But as a wife and mother, she has happily returned to The Hollows’s insular embrace. As a psychologist, her knowledge of family histories provides powerful insights into her patients’ lives. So when the girlfriend of her teenage son, Rick, disappears, Maggie’s intuitive gift proves useful to the case—and also dangerous.
Eerie parallels soon emerge between Charlene’s disappearance and the abduction of another local girl that shook the community years ago when Maggie was a teenager. The investigation has her husband, Jones, the lead detective on the case, acting strangely. Rick, already a brooding teenager, becomes even more withdrawn. In a town where the past is always present, nobody is above suspicion, not even a son in the eyes of his father.
As she tries to reassure him that Rick embodies his father in all of the important ways, Maggie realizes this might be exactly what Jones fears most. Determined to uncover the truth, Maggie pursues her own leads into Charlene’s disappearance and exposes a long-buried town secret—one that could destroy everything she holds dear.
A thrilling novel from New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger about the hunt for a missing girl and one community’s intricate yet fragile bonds.
“[A] nail-biting nuanced whodunit.”—People
Everybody knows everybody in The Hollows, a quaint, charming town outside of New York City. It’s a place where neighbors keep an eye on one another’s kids, where people say hello in the grocery store, and where high school cliques and antics are never quite forgotten. As a child, Maggie found living under the microscope of small-town life stifling. But as a wife and mother, she has happily returned to The Hollows’s insular embrace. As a psychologist, her knowledge of family histories provides powerful insights into her patients’ lives. So when the girlfriend of her teenage son, Rick, disappears, Maggie’s intuitive gift proves useful to the case—and also dangerous.
Eerie parallels soon emerge between Charlene’s disappearance and the abduction of another local girl that shook the community years ago when Maggie was a teenager. The investigation has her husband, Jones, the lead detective on the case, acting strangely. Rick, already a brooding teenager, becomes even more withdrawn. In a town where the past is always present, nobody is above suspicion, not even a son in the eyes of his father.
As she tries to reassure him that Rick embodies his father in all of the important ways, Maggie realizes this might be exactly what Jones fears most. Determined to uncover the truth, Maggie pursues her own leads into Charlene’s disappearance and exposes a long-buried town secret—one that could destroy everything she holds dear.
ביקורות-
-
June 21, 2010
Set in the Hollows, a secluded town about 100 miles outside New York City, Unger's contemporary thriller offers solid entertainment, but lacks the tension of her 2008 stand-alone, Black Out. Psychologist Maggie Cooper and her husband, Det. Jones Cooper, disagree on how to handle their rebellious son, 17-year-old Rick, who prefers to spend time with his band or holed up with his girlfriend, Charlene Murray. When Charlene disappears one night after a fight with her mother, Maggie and Jones wonder if she ran off to Manhattan, but are reminded of the disappearance 20 years earlier of Sarah Meyers, whose mutilated body was found after she vanished on her way home from school. Though the alleged killer confessed, there are still unanswered questions, and Maggie and Jones find themselves forced to revisit the past as suspicion falls on Rick. Since the Hollows is so small, characters continually rehash secrets—and rumors—so that Unger relies too heavily on the community's interconnectedness to bolster her plot. -
June 1, 2010
Several decades of small-town misdeeds come to light in Unger's latest thriller (Die for You, 2009, etc.).
The Hollows is the kind of place where "your doctor was also your neighbor...the cop at your door had been the burnout always in trouble when you were in high school." So when self-dramatizing Charlene Murray vanishes after a fight with her mother Melody, everyone uneasily remembers the disappearance two decades earlier of perfect student Sarah, who turned up dead in the woods. Most unnerved of all is local cop Jones Cooper; it's clear from the novel's opening that he was somehow involved in Sarah's death. That may be why he's willing to believe that his son Ricky, Charlene's boyfriend, was the one who picked her up in a green car the night she left home. Jones' lack of trust infuriates and bewilders wife Maggie, a psychiatrist who knows there are plenty of kids in The Hollows more troubled than mildly rebellious Ricky. First and foremost among them is Maggie's patient Marshall Crosby, sinking into severe depression now that he's returned to living with his abusive father. Travis Crosby has been bounced from the police force after his DUI conviction, but he's still armed and dangerous, not least for his hold over Marshall, who is both deeply creepy and heartbreakingly vulnerable in Unger's multidimensional portrait. All the other anxious, guilt-ridden characters are painted in equally perceptive shades of gray. For a while it seems the author has planted too many dark secrets in her plot—even Maggie's elderly mother has something to hide—but gradually she pulls the narrative threads together in a rich tapestry of psychological wounds passed down through generations. The denouement is grim, but the final resolution of both missing girls' cases offers hope for the future. In the novel's most moving scene, Ricky offers his tormented father the understanding and acceptance Jones is shamed to realize he has never given his son.
Cleverly plotted and emotionally engaging.
(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
-
June 1, 2010
Twenty years ago, the murder of a young girl shook a small town in New York. Her classmates, now adults with children the age of the victim, are chilled when another girl, Charlene, disappears. The incident revives old fears, as some of the town's residents never believed the right man was convicted of the crime. The murderer must be someone they know, as both disappearances took place without anyone ever reporting having seen a stranger. In Unger's latest novel (after "Black Out"), psychologist Maggie Cooper and her police detective husband, Jones, work to discover the truth, as their wayward teenaged son, Ricky, having dated Charlene, is now a suspect. VERDICT The compelling and true-to-life characters make this a great choice for mystery and suspense fans. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 3/15/10.]Linda Oliver, Colorado SpringsCopyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
-
July 1, 2010
History repeats itself in the cozy suburban enclave of the Hollows when a teenage girl goes missing. Charlenes disappearance strikes uncomfortably close to home for psychiatrist Maggie and her policeman husband, Jones, opening wounds that go back 20 years to when they, and Charlenes mother, Melody, were high-school classmates and Maggies best friend, Sarah, was found brutally murdered. Jones and Melody carry a secret from that time, one that involves school bully turned town cop Travis Crosby. Now both Maggie and Jones son, Ricky, and Travis son, Marshall, are prime suspects in Charlenes disappearance; and while Jones harbors unsettling opinions about Ricky, Maggie knows other disturbing facts about Marshall. As tensions mount with each passing hour that Charlene is gone, the parents must face the truth about the teenagers they were if they are to help the children they themselves have raised. Ungers taut and edgy tale stealthily plumbs the depths of desperation that grow more dangerous with the passage of time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.) - St. Petersburg Times "Unger skillfully builds suspense by alternating point of view from chapter to chapter... Too many thrillers rely on coincidence or outlandish twists to connect the dots in a crime investigation, but Unger makes that process organic by using the interconnectedness of her characters' lives over the decades -- these people really do know each others' secrets. Even apparently unrelated threads -- like the chapters about the exterminator called in to trap the raccoons in Elizabeth's attic -- are cleverly woven into the plot. Unger is also adept at drawing believable characters and relationships. Much of the emotional weight and considerable tension of Fragile have to do with families, with how parents and their children relate (or don't) and how husbands and wives can think they know everything about each other -- and then find themselves surprised."
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "If you're a fan of Jodi Picoult's family chronicle storytelling, you'll enjoy Fragile, too. It's set in a small affluent town outside New York, where everyone knows someone who kissed the pizza guy once and many have ugly memories and buried secrets. When a teenage girl goes missing, the lives of all who knew her unravel. Unger balances nicely the suspense of her missing person story (a layered one when the vanishing of another teenage girl 30 years earlier is connected) with deeper sentiments. How do you live in the present when the past has broken you?"
- Boston Globe "Best-selling author Lisa Unger has made her mark with a string of successful thrillers --Beautiful Lies, Black Out, and Die for You. While her new novel, Fragile, has a mystery (or three) and often unfurls with page-turning suspense, it also mines the more intimate territory of family and community dynamics, inspired by the disappearance and murder of one of Unger's own schoolmates more than two decades ago... In the style of Jodi Picoult, Fragile tells its tale through the real-time action and freighted recollections of a diverse cast of characters living in fictional The Hollows, a small town 100 miles outside New York City with a reputation for quaint charm. In reality, The Hollows is rife with dysfunction, full ofugly memories and buried secrets."
- New Mystery Reader "The never forgotten, complicated, and sometimes dangerous entanglements that can arise from growing up in a small town are compassionately and insightfully portrayed by this new suspense thriller from Unger. Perfectly balancing the need for independence from one's past and the indelible ties that persist regardless of any attempt otherwise, Unger creates a tale that's full of realistic characters that will remind readers of either someone they know, or perhaps even themselves. And filled with perfectly written passages that are worthy of being read twice also serve to make this read an intense journey that evokes a surprising amount of emotion. As does the beautifully written side-story involving the man (and his new love) who will eventually provide important clues in the case. Unger reminds us with a persistent grace that while the past is physically over, it remains a part of who we are. Poetic at times, heartbreaking at others, and suspenseful throughout, this is easily the best book of the year and comes with the strongest recommendation we have."
- Daily American "Lisa Unger writes psychologically in-depth stories with great characters. The plot is fast-paced and has many twists."
- Florida Weekly "While Lisa Unger shows amazing skill at plot development, pacing, and projecting a rich sense of place, her talent in characterization - in plumbing the depths of her characters' inner circumstances - is truly exceptional... Though something of a departure from her recent thrillers, Lisa Unger's FRAGILE shines with her signature talent and generates plenty of suspense."
- Bookreporter.com "Lisa Unger brings this little town alive with flourish, probing the tragedies and the victories of the citizens of The Hollows. Each character has a multi-layered complexity and his or her own dangerous flaw unseen
