Alison Kent

A thriller that will stay with you forever …

Detective Archie Sheridan can’t forget the woman who kidnapped him.

For ten days, she tortured him to the brink of death, then mysteriously set him free and turned herself in.

Now two years later, he’s addicted to pain pills, estranged from his family, and obsessed with her.

Gretchen Lowell. She’s beautiful. She’s brilliant. She’s a killer.

And she still controls Archie - even from behind bars.

As Archie trails a new case, he needs Gretchen now in more ways than one - to catch a killer and to release his soul.

Love hurts. Sometimes it’s torture.

One of the most difficult elements - and one of the most vital - to pull off in a novel is the suspension of disbelief - not only when it comes to plot elements, but in regards to character behavior as well. As readers, we have to believe a character’s actions are true. Even if we don’t understand the motivation, if it’s not clearly spelled out, we have to be able to suspend our disbelief, say, when a character takes a hammer and nail to another’s ribs, or uses an H crochet hook on a small intestine, or spoon feeds liquid drain cleaner to a hostage. It’s not enough that we are witness to these things happening. We need to know why the character does them.

Or do we?

Author Chelsea Cain has created in the character of Gretchen Lowell “the most compelling, most original serial killer since Hannibal Lecter” according to Chuck Palahniuk. HEARTSICK, however, is not her story.

It is the story of Detective Archie Sheridan, lead detective on the task force that hunted her for ten years before he became her final victim. After two years purportedly spent putting his mind and body back together, Archie is now back on the job investigating another serial killer - and still wheeling and dealing with Gretchen for more of the bodies she buried.

Joining Archie is reporter Susan Ward sent to profile the legendary detective. Except Susan is being manipulated as well. Archie wants his story told his way. He is ready for the truth to set him free. But the deeper his investigation and Susan’s story go, the more intricately they’re found to be intertwined - something that comes as no surprise to Gretchen.

Cain gives equal attention to the story’s secondary characters, Archie’s partner Henry Sobol and FBI profiler Anne Boyd to mention two, as well as Susan’s boss Ian, rather than forgetting that the story can’t be carried by Archie, Susan and Gretchen alone. These characters are not stock, not brought in from central casting. They are vital to the story’s success.

Anne Boyd ate all of the chocolate in the hotel minibar. She started with the plain M&M’s, then ate the Toblerone, then the peanut M&M’s. When she was done, she flattened the wrappers and placed them next to the photographs of the dead girls that lay on her hotel room bed. Candy helped her think. There would be time to diet when people stopped killing one another.

Such tidbits of characterization put us in the scene with Anne, put us in her head, showing us the way she works, her thought process. The writing itself is very readable. The narrative flows. Cain’s use of viewpoint is always authentic; there is no reader manipulation. The story is tight, with smart and sharp observations, giving the reader credit.

Gretchen laughed. It was a throaty laugh, like Bette Davis, like sex and lung cancer. She’d probably spent years practicing it. It was worth that kind of effort.

The biggest question the book leaves unanswered is, “Who is Gretchen Lowell?” She is billed as the star, the draw, yet we learn very little about who she is, only about what she has done, the way she involved herself in the task force’s investigation of her crimes originally. The mark of Cain’s brilliance here is her ability to give us Gretchen without once going into her head, without revealing her backstory in an intrusive infodump, without doing anything but constructing the suspense plot with thrilling precision. Take a look at this piece told in Susan’s viewpoint:

“Debbie hates you,” she told Gretchen. “She hates you for murdering the man she knew as her husband.” She glanced at Archie. No reaction. “She thinks he’s dead. And that Archie is someone else now.”

Gretchen looked pleased, her eyes bright, her cheekbones pronounced. “But she still loves him?”

Susan bit her lip. “Yes.”

“And he still loves her. But he can’t be with her. And he can’t be with his two adorable children. Know why?”

“Because of you,” Susan guessed.

“Because of me. And that’s why you’ll never be with him, either, pigeon. Because I’ve ruined him for other women.”

“You’ve ruined me for other human beings, Gretchen,” Archie said wearily. He slid the box off the table and put it back in his pocket, then scooted his chair back from the table and stood.

“Where are you going?” Gretchen asked, her voice betraying her sudden anxiety. Susan watched as her entire posture changed. Her face hardened. Were those crow’s-feet? Gretchen leaned forward toward Archie as if attempting to close the space betwen them.

“I’m taking a break,” Archie answered, his fingertips still on the table. “I’m not sure that we’re being very productive today.” He looked down at Susan. “Come on,” he said. He took a step back and Gretchen reached up, hands still shackled, and seized his hand.

“The name on the grave is Emma Watson,” she said quickly. “The cemetery is on SR One Hundred, in a little town called Hamilton, eighteen miles west of Lincoln.”

Archie didn’t move. He just stood, staring at his hand in hers. Not pulling away. Like someone gripping a live electrical wire. Susan had no idea what to do. She looked around frantically at the observation window and, as if on cue, Henry Sobol burst into the room. He was at the table in three steps, and he reached a large hand around Gretchen’s wrist and squeezed it until she winced in pain and let Archie’s hand fall free.

“That’s against the rules,” Henry said between clenched teeth. His face was red and his pulse surged under the thick skin of his neck. “You touch him again and I swear to fuck that I’ll end this bullshit. Bodies or not. Got it?” Gretchen didn’t recoil, didn’t say a word, just looked at him, lips wet with saliva, nostrils flaring, eyes daring him to take a swing at her. Suddenly, she didn’t look beautiful at all.

Even with all of that said, I don’t care so much about reading more about Gretchen Lowell. I want to read more about Archie Sheridan. Or at least I want to read more of the two of them together, not about her alone. Which brings us full circle. It’s not enough that we are witness to these things happening. We need to know why they do, why she does them.

Or do we?

Does the fact that I’m more interested in Archie than in Gretchen mean Ms. Cain has succeeded, or failed?

Whatever the answer, HEARTSICK is a phenomenal read. You can order it here at Amazon, or here at B&N.