Product Description

Just recovering from depression, Joyce Neuhauser ignores signs that she is being trailed by a outlandish but strangely familiar man, with disastrous results for her entire family. By the author of Island Girl.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2413561 in Books
• Published on: 1993-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 264 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Berry's ( Island Girl ) psychological thriller, although often intriguing, is marred by her failure to fully develop some critical plot twists. After her release from a psychiatric hospital where she received shock treatments to relieve her depression, Joyce Neuhauser vacations in Cape Cod with her husband and four children. There her 13-year-old daughter Debbie meets Ronnie Haddon, a man whom readers already know is dangerously unstable. Meanwhile, Joyce sees Ronnie driving a van; though she doesn't know who he is, he seems both familiar and disturbing, and she probes her unreliable memory and her dreams to come up with his identity. Shortly afterward, Ronnie kills a local woman; then he kidnaps Debbie, forcing her to call her parents to say she has eloped. Having remembered a past episode involving Ronnie, Joyce prods the police in their investigation, as Ronnie kills again. A final scene in a hurricane wraps up this layered, often suspenseful tale. It leaves the reader ultimately disappointed, however, because the important hinge between past and present dangers--Ronnie's prior association with Joyce and his sudden foray into murder--is left largely a coincidence.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The closing days of a Provincetown summer bring possible disaster for the family of a 13-year-old girl who catches the eye of a warped but harmless-looking man. He stalks the girl, kills to protect their "love," and changes his life to facilitate their idyllic future together. Spellbinding suspense accompanies the man's inexorable movement toward his objective as police hasten to find leads, and the girl's mom, a recent mental case herself, struggles to recall something about a man she's seen. Crackling psychological tension.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
The author of the cheerful series featuring Bonnie Indermill (Island Girl, etc.) is on a different tack here. Her heroine now is Joyce Neuhauser, a youngish mother of four just released from a psychiatric hospital after treatments, including electroshock, for severe depression. Unsure of herself, her memory impaired, Joyce is nevertheless the guiding force in the search for her kidnapped 13- year-old daughter Deborah. Thirtysomething, ordinary-seeming Ronnie Haddon first sees Deborah in a Cape Cod general store where the Neuhauser family has stopped on the way to their vacation apartment. Deborah innocently plays into his crazy delusions and, after a brief contact, becomes an overriding obsession that pushes Haddon to murder, then to the pursuit of his quarry. It's Joyce whose sharp observation, stubborn questions, and piecemeal memories set the police on the right track.... Crisp pacing, vivid minor characters, and a chilling psychological profile add up to absorbing storytelling that showcases a versatile talent. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.