Krishna
This is a fairly weird story. Not a novel that keeps you glued to the pages either. But as a way to diversify the author list and read new books, I chose it almost at random.
Advertised as a “Supernatural Suspense Novel”, it is definitely misleading. There is some supernatural stuff in it, like Emily, who can read minds. But it is not central or even relevant to the story and she does nothing with it that could be called effective. As for the suspense, read on to find out.
The story looks and feels like hundreds of Hollywood stories where things start out well and go out of control quickly and where the good people and bad people quarrel not only with each other but among themselves as well, and the good men are really not so good after all.
A girl (Emily) who can read minds goes with her quarreling dad Jay and mom Carrie to a museum. Two crooks plan to hijack them with the car to escape across the state line. The father is a cop turned bad and abusive to wife. Emily is oblivious of all this but finds out just before the museum trip that the mom plans to leave her dad taking Emily away and the dad also finds out at the same time.
Emily hopes that the trip will mend the broken family but before they can complete the trip, the baddies kidnap them at gun point.
They are hijacked in the car by Crow and Heddy, the baddies.. The parents are also raped by Crow and Heddy in a cheap motel and this destroys the family completely. The little girl, who was kept away in another room, has the ability to read the thoughts on others (but stays away from reading lustful and too ugly thoughts) and knows that they are really bad news. In fact she tried to warn her parents even before the kidnapping that the two have evil intentions but they ignore her.
We learn that Crow and Heddy robbed an illicit meth factory before escaping with the family. Heddy goes to visit her mother in a trailer. And the gang that runs the meth lab is also now after them.
She kills a drug company associate in a bathroom before he reaches her mother and discovers, with Jay’s help that there has been another tail. An accident causes them additional issues. (Sounds like a B grade Hollywood movie? You have got it categorized absolutely correctly)
Then they get caught with the drug lords and Heddy learns that Crow may be double timing her too with the money. Jay of all people saves all of their lives. He seriously considers eloping with Hedley to Mexico.
The drama escalates, if you consider this as escalating. Heddy goes berserk when she finds out that Crow even cheated her out of the major portions of the winnings. They get almost caught by drug lords, first in a parking lot, when Jay saves them, and then in a hotel, where they escape through the fire escape on to the roof in a mist when the hotel owner tips them off.
This is the genre pioneered all those years ago by James Hadley Chase and revolves around evil people doing evil things ineptly and getting undone repeatedly and how messy the life of the baddies too can be. The storytelling is not vivid and does not hold your attention tightly.
The ending has a kind of interesting twist where Crow truly turns loyal to Heddy at the same time that Heddy gives up on him. Except for that, this is a very simplistic story with a non complex narration.
Let us say a 3/10
- – Krishna