Sleeping Beauty

Ashley Spencer fell asleep dreaming of the victory her soccer team had won just that afternoon. Her best friend Tanya is asleep beside her. In celebration of the victory, Tanya was sleeping over. Ashley's mother is away, her dad is asleep in his room. Then all off a sudden she's awake, an intruder is on Tanya, he binds her, then he's on Ashley. The binds her as well. Then he murders her father, well almost murders him, comes back, but before he drags Tanya to another room, where he rapes and kills her, he says to Ashley, "See you later." Ashley hears the killer as he uses her friend, hears her screams, hears his joy, then her father, bloody and dying, crawls into her bedroom and frees her. He is finished, he says. She must run, he says. And run she does. When her mother, a reporter named Terri, comes home they find that Ashley has been accepted into a private school run by Casey Van Meter. This is good, because Ashley needs to start over. One of the instructors there is a one novel wonder who runs a writer's group. He invites Terri to join and at the first meeting, he reads from a story he's writing and Terri is shocked, because he's reading a fictionalized account of the murders that had taken place in her house. However, she does not go straight to the police, instead investigating herself and she is killed during a meeting with Casey Van Meter. Casey survives the killer's attempt, but is left in a coma and the killer tries again to get Ashley, killing her police bodyguards. Now Ashley is a girl on the run and she runs far away to Europe, not coming back until her friend and attorney tells her that Casey is her real mother and that her Uncle, Casey's brother, wants to pull the plug on her life support systems. They need Ashley to apply for guardianship to keep her alive. This Ashley does, but Casey comes out of the coma. And after all this time the killer comes back, trying yet again to get Ashley, but he's caught, tried, convicted and gets the death penalty. But is that it. Not on your life. This super thriller has pages and pages to go and those pages will surly steal away your sleep as they did mine. Mr. Margolin has served up a thriller that will keep you guessing and he's peopled it with great characters who I cared about. I especially liked the tough and gritty black prosecutor Deputy District Attorney Deliah Wallace and how she interacted with Ashley. I liked the twists in the tale a whole bunch, and I especially liked the killer of an ending, one that I didn't see coming. This is just a super book.

Phillip Margolin has never disappointed me yet with his novels, and with Sleeping Beauty, his streak continues. In this novel things are seldom what they seem and it would spoil the read for me to reveal the twists and turns that this story takes. The straight forward story is that Ashley Spencer, a high school soccer star has a friend to her house for a sleep over following a big game and awakens to the most terrifying experience one can imagine. A masked stranger is in their room. He ties up Ashley and takes her friend into another room where he rapes and murders her. Returning to her room, he says, "I'll see you later" and she hears him go down to the kitchen. Her father, who is the only parent in the house that night crawls into her room suffering from multiple stab wounds and using the last of his energy frees fer from her bonds and she escapes out her window.This appears to be a random event until Ashley's mother is taking a creative writing course at a nearby private school in which Ashley has enrolled and hears the instructor read a passage from a piece of writing that describes the event that her daughter has gone through and also includes a part of what happened that received no publicity. She eventually determines that no one in the class wrote the story and that it was drafted by the instructor, Joshua Maxwell, himself.Her suspicions are aroused to the point where she confides them to the Dean of the school who checks out the instructor's background and calls the mother suggesting a meeting to discuss what she has found. While jogging on the school grounds near where the meeting is taking place, Ashley hears a scream and decides to investigate. What she sees as she peers in the window are the bodies of two women lying on the floor (the Dean and Ashley's mother) and Joshua Maxwell standing over them with a bloody knife in his hands. He sees her as she turns and runs for her life with Maxwell in pursuit. She escapes, the story is out, Maxwell is pursued and eventually arrested and brought to trial. And the story is JUST BEGINNING. Margolin uses an interesting vehicle in telling the story. The Dean, Casey Van Meter, was not murdered, but ended up in a coma. Her brother, Miles Van Meter has written a book about the events leading up to her being in the coma entitled, Sleeping Beauty. A continuing thread in this book is his presence at a book signing where he reads from the book and answers questions about it. I will leave it to the reader to explore the intracies of this very well told tale. It is an undertaking that will be well worth the effort.

I stayed up later than I should have last night finishing Phillip Margolin's latest novel, Sleeping Beauty. Margolin is another one of my "must read" authors, and I look forward to each new novel from him. And once again, I was not disappointed.The author actually tells two stories by jumping between past and present, and allows them both to meet up at the end. Ashley Spencer is a teenager who's father and best friend are murdered by a serial killer, and she narrowly escapes. After it appears she is getting her life back on track, her mother is murdered by the same person. That's the story that occurs in the past. The current story is being told by a writer who's sister was put into a coma by the same attack that killed Ashley's mother. He wrote the story as a tribute to his sister, and he's added some new chapters after the killer was captured five years after the attacks. That is occurring in the present, and that's about as much of the plotline that I'll reveal here, as a number of twists and turns start happening that definitely keep you guessing as to the outcome of it all.The writing is tight and emotional, and you get to know the characters very well without a loss of action. He throws in a number of well-timed plot turns that alter the entire direction of the story and how you view the players. I'll admit to a bias here as the writer is from Portland, Oregon and his stories all take place in the local area. It's enjoyable to read stories where you can vividly put yourself at the exact location where the action is occurring. Great read, great story, and I highly recommend this one.

Ashley Spencer is your typical teenager. She has great parents, makes good grades in school and she is a star on the soccer team, but her perfect life is about to be shattered by a shocking act of violence. While her reporter mom is on assignment, Ashley spends quality time with her father and her best friend until a stranger enters the Spencer home and changes things forever. The man stabs Ashley's father and then moves on to her friend, raping and killing her while Ashley sits tied up. As Ashley sits waiting for the killer to return her father crawls in to help her, setting her free to escape. Barely getting away alive, Ashley makes it to a neighbor's house where she calls the police. The police begin investigating the crime scene to discover a key piece of evidence left behind by the killer.Ashley's mom returns to home to deal with the tragedy and to try to make a new start for her and her daughter. Terri Spencer finds The Oregon Academy a private school with a top notch girls soccer team. Once at the school, Ashley settles in quickly and soon has a good relationship with the Dean, Casey Van Meter.As Terri settles into her new life she discovers a crucial piece of information that may lead to the capture of her husband's killer, a discovery that she shares with Casey Van Meter, but before anything can be done with the information she is killed and Casey is beaten into a coma, both victims to the same man who killed Ashley's father...a man who just happens to be a teacher at the school.Things begin to spin out of control and the key to finding the identity of the killer, or killers lies in a true crime book called `Sleeping Beauty' a book written by Casey's brother Miles.`Sleeping Beauty' is a twist filled shocker that's as smart as it is suspenseful. The complex plot will keep you guessing right up until the end and even then you won't have it figured out. From the gripping opening scene until the surprise ending you will be held captive by a spellbinding thriller filled with gruesome murders and sharp courtroom scenes. Phillip Margolin is a master story teller and his imaginative new novel proves he is at the top of his game. Fans of Margolin's previous novels will find this to be his best book in years.A definite MUST read!Nick Gonnella