A BOOK REVIEW BY ALEX GRANT

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THE ANNIVERSARY Author- Amy Gutman Little, Brown and Company /May 2003 -@ $32.95 CAN.

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Amy Gutman’s second psychological thriller THE ANNIVERSARY gets off to rocky start - too many ill-defined female characters whose interrelationships are impenetrable- -then develops into a genuinely ingenious and intricate serial murderer mystery. The mass-murderer Stephen Gage is already dead and gone but the appalling trail of grief and resentment that he has left behind continues to haunt his former girlfriend Callie Thayer.

Callie is a single-mother and recovering alcoholic living the good life in a small town in Massachusetts, She became financially independent from her collaboration with true-crime author Diane Massey whose book on Stephen Gage became a best-seller. Both women fear that they are being stalked five years after the killer’s execution, as does lawyer Melanie White who failed to win Gage’s appeal case. Who on earth could still hold a grudge against these three?

Author Gutman teases out her principal suspects’ motives with finesse leaving us guessing until the very last moment, and we can forgive her a few contrivances such as the peculiar mis–conduct of her policeman lover, Ric,k who comes to a last-minute rescue. Most unprofessional of him and overprotective.
Yet to successfully engage the reader in yet another serial-murderer mystery at a time when the field is saturated with such bloody tomes is truly a considerable and admirable accomplishment.

© Alex Grant June May 2003
alexgrantreviews@hotmail.com

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