Red, Red Robin

British writer Gallagher produces a serial-killer novel of intense psychological suspense in this 1995 thriller.An Englishwoman who has adopted Philadelphia as her home, Ruth Lasseter is having an affair with the boss. When she needs a date for a company function she turns to an escort service, choosing a shockingly young and handsome date who enchants her with his perfect manners and romantic attentions.But the young man, Tim Hagan, is not satisfied with one night. He begins a stalking campaign which escalates into a nightmare of violence. Ruth escapes, with the help of Aidan Kincannon, an ex-cop turned security guard, but loses her lover, her job and her self-assurance. A year later Ruth is living in Aidan's house. His sometime lover, she is obsessed full-time with Hagan and refuses to accept news of his death.She embarks on a search into his past, peeling away layers, finding horrors. Aidan, who's made poor choices in his life, develops as a man of deep integrity, bravery and uncertainty. Meanwhile Ruth's ex-lover's vengeful wife, a lawyer, is determined to have Ruth deported. And the career of Tim Hagan is once again steering him on a collision course with Ruth.Gallagher focuses on character development, making his people steer the plot. A riveting read with enough unusual quirks to make it stand out.

I'll state right off the bat that the reason I bought and read this book was because the author had penned one of my favorite Doctor Who serials and I wanted to see if he was as apt at novel-writing as he was at script-writing (I should note that he also wrote a rather mediocre Doctor Who serial, but we won't talk about that now). I was quite impressed by this book, and it fulfilled my expectations. I'm not a regular reader of this genre, but I found this particular example to be amazingly captivating.While reading the opening chapters of RED, RED ROBIN, my mind quickly went over the possible outcomes for the story, and I quickly began to predict how the book would unfold. It turns out that my initial prediction was correct in all but one aspect. The scenario that I had envisioned for the whole book ended at about page 75, and from there the plot kept making clever leaps and turns, defying my ability to guess which direction it would go. Eventually, I stopped making predictions and just enjoyed the thrill ride that it offered."Psychological thriller" is, I believe the term they use to describe this sort of book, and it's a genre that I'll admit to some inexperience with. But if they're all as good as this one is, I should have some great reading ahead of me. I went into this book having not read so much as a single plot summary of the novel, so I was taken completely by surprise at every twist and turn. Therefore, I will not describe more than the very initial setup. All you should know is that this book starts off with two people: a woman, and a man she hires from an (legitimate) escort service. What this scenario turns into should not be hard to guess, but how it happens, and what happens beyond that are utterly surprising, and completely mesmerizing. A book of this kind lives or dies depending on how interesting the protagonists are to the reader. The audience doesn't necessarily have to like or dislike them; they just have to want to keep reading about them. The characters of RED, RED ROBIN are fascinating creations. They're given huge amounts of background detail. Their actions are always understandable and consistent. And one of them even gets childhood flashback sequences that are quite creepy and impressive. Gallagher does all this without sacrificing the breakneck speed of his plot.One thing that I quite enjoyed was the way that the British author included many different forms of American life. I can almost imagine him over here doing research and being inspired by all the different types of locations that are available. The story begins in the bustling city of Philadelphia, but it moves around quite a bit, taking in big cities and small towns, open countryside, and boggy swampland. He brings forward a very interesting outsider's view of America.I'm glad I let Stephen Gallagher's television work lure me into his mainstream novels. I now have a second book of his waiting for me in my too-read pile. If this book is an

What makes one thriller about a crazed killer so much different from another? Why do I want to advise you to rush out now and get your hands on a copy of Red, Red Robin any way you can, and encourage you to write Ballantine Books to persuade them to get this book back in print? Although the plot is good, there are other, lesser books with similar plots--casual acquaintance becomes stalker becomes deranged killer isn't exactly a novelty. Other writers write equally good characters, and an intensity of pacing has become standard in today's fiction. But Red, Red Robin does all this and more. Where Stephen Gallagher succeeds best is his focus--not on the single-minded cop who chases down the killer, nor on the maniacal lunatic himself, but on the victim. Of course, in today's high-bodycount slasherfests of fiction, any novel based on the victim's point of view is likely to become a short-short story instead, but Gallagher sidesteps this trap deftly, instead apparently killing off the killer early on. Of course this is a red herring ("Why wasn't the book called Red, Red Herring?", I hear you ask) and we all know it. Where an author like Dean Koontz would follow with an interminable and fairly mindless chase, Gallagher instead takes the opportunity to explore the consequences of the abduction and near-death upon his protagonist. And here he excels as a writer, making us truly feel the uncertainty, the worthlessness, and the constant paralyzing fear of the victim long after any threat has passed. For this, Red, Red Robin deserves a read. So don't be a victim of bad marketing decisions yourself-- get off the web now and write that letter to the good people at Ballantine Books!