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9/25/02

Revealing the secrets of the soul

By Jeff Minick
Point Fury by John Maxwell.
Schribner, 2002. $25 — 317 pp.


People are rarely what they seem.

That smiling banker may have stumbled through last night grieving lost opportunities of the heart in an anguished, alcoholic fog. The pudgy, doleful butcher working behind the glass of the local supermarket may spend his Sunday afternoons with his three children from a previous marriage, trying to cram all that he is and believes into six hours with his treasures. The hair stylist in the five-chair salon just off Market Street keeps up a brisk conversation with her customers while plotting all the while how to leave her lover and move back to Tennessee.

Everyone but the insane wears masks — what is insanity, after all, but the leakage of secrets into the public square — and it is this subject of masks and secrets hidden in the attic of our personal lives that form the stories behind two recent suspense novels.

In John Maxwell’s Point Fury, we meet Chris Nielson, a failed musician whose recent break-up with his girlfriend has left him at loose ends and in need of a new direction in his life. A wealthy family friend, Ted Harper, is looking for someone to watch his beach house on the Maryland shore for the winter, and Chris decides that the job will allow him the time and means for deciding what he wants to do with his life.

Within just a few days of moving into the house, Chris is caught up in seemingly senseless events that leave him uneasy about the house and about Ted Harper. He meets a beautiful neighbor, Caroline, who seems attracted to Chris, but her story of her past and why she has suddenly appeared in Chris’s life shifts like the sand on the windy beach. Realizing eventually that Ted Harper is behind many of the mysterious occurrences and behind Caroline’s appearance on the island, Chris takes his revenge by sleeping with one of Harper’s lovers. The remainder of Point Fury is the story of Harper’s revenge, of his many secrets, and of how Chris reacts to Harper’s attempts to help change his life.

Point Fury is a solid, finely tuned suspense story that deserves to stand on its own, but for some reason both the author and the publisher seem intent on comparing it to John Fowles’ classic The Magus. Point Fury is to The Magus as a ballpark hotdog with chili and slaw is to a steak with béarnaise sauce. Maxwell tells us that The Magus inspired him, but for those who have read Fowles’ novel, such an admission weakens Maxwell’s work.


° ° °


Long Lost by David Morrell.
Warner Books, 2002. $25.95 — 320 pp.

David Morrell is familiar to many readers as the author of such books as First Blood, The League Of Night And Fog, and Extreme Denial. In his latest novel Long Lost, Morrell creates a thriller based on a long-lost brother, kidnapping, and a driving thirst for revenge.

Brad Denning is a successful architect with a loving wife, Kate, and an 11- year-old son, Jason. The great regret of Brad’s life occurs when he is a boy with the kidnapping of his 9-year-old brother Petey. After appearing on national television in an interview regarding his work, Brad is suddenly confronted by a man who claims to be Petey. This stranger knows details from Brad’s childhood and family life that only Petey could know.

Within days, however, Petey attempts to murder Brad, and then kidnaps Kate and Jason. When the various police agencies fail to track down Petey — by this time, no one, including the reader, is totally convinced that the kidnapper is really Petey after all — Brad begins the process of tracking Petey himself. He hires a highly renowned detective, takes his advice, and then begins to search for Petey by trying to put himself into Petey’s head, following a trail of murders, abandoned cars, and vague hints across the country. This hunt was the best part of Morrell’s novel, particularly the part in which Brad tracked down Petey’s different victims.

Either Long Lost or Point Fury should afford readers who enjoy suspense several pleasant evenings of good reading.

(Jeff Minick lives in Waynesville and can be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com)