Synopses & Reviews
Review
"The author of three workman-like mysteries, Allegretto decided to stake out a piece of Stephen King's turf and produce a terror/suspense novel. King has nothing to worry about. Alex Whitaker, his wife Sarah, and stepson Brian live in Colorado Springs. After unhappy marriages, they are just getting it all together, spending their first Christmas in their new home, an old, massive Victorian house. Hear the skeletons rattling in the closet? Alex's first family, a wife and adopted son, were murdered by the boy's natural mother, who has escaped from a mental asylum and is on her way west to murder Alex. From this premise, the novel waddles from scene to scene, overburdened with detail and slowed nearly to a halt by its depiction of the family's cloying relationships. If Stephen King's talent is to make the implausible real, Allegretto has managed to make the real, and banal, implausible." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)