THE FURY

5 stars

Have mercy - he's gone and done it again! If this book by ubertalented Alex Michaelides doesn't cause a fury of excitement among readers, I'll eat your hat (I'll have to borrow it because mine got blown along with my mind even before I got to the end).

Narrated by Elliott Chase, one of the main characters, the story recounts what happened on Aura, a small Greek island owned by retired and highly acclaimed motion picture star Lana Farrar. She's invited a couple of friends plus her husband Jason and son Leo there for a weekend getaway - as much to get some much-needed sunshine for herself as anything else. But the get-together stretches the concept of "friends" to the limit and beyond; before the weekend is out, tragedy will strike one of them. Was it triggered by the winds - the menos, or "fury," for which the island is known - or was it a deliberate act by one (or more) of the humans? And if so, who's the culprit, and what on earth was the motive?

The details lie in Elliott's narration - expertly crafted by the author, of course - which takes readers back to view interactions among the characters that led up to the events of the day; nothing is as it seems (and maybe never was). Once I got the gist of what was happening, I was hooked; it was next to impossible to put the book down, and as I neared the end, I knew I'd never sleep unless and until I got there no matter how much beyond my regular bedtime that happened. The intricacy of the plot from the start to the "Oh, my gosh" finish is nothing short of awesome.

Since I'm duty-bound not to reveal too much, all I can say is it's a winner in my book, one I know will be at the top of my list of favorites for some time to come. Many, many thanks to the publisher for the privilege of reading a pre-release copy. Brilliant!

The Fury by Alex Michaelides (Celedon Books, January 2024); 320 pp.

THE MAIDENS

3.5 stars out of 5

Anticipation of reading this book elicited high hopes from me, but although I tried really hard, I think successfully, to not compare it to the author's wildly successful 2019 book, The Silent Patient (which absolutely blew me away) - it turned out to be just okay. 

It kicks off with the promise of intrigue:  Mariana Andros, whose beloved husband Sebastian died many months ago during a vacation to her native Greece, gets a frantic call from her niece Zoe, a student at Cambridge University. One of her school friends has been murdered. Mariana, once a student at the campus herself (it's where she met Sebastian, the love of her life), doesn't waste much time heading to Cambridge to comfort Zoe. 

Mariana is a London-based psychotherapist specializing in groups, and much is made of one of them - a disturbed and disturbing guy who talks and acts like a stalker. Despite the potential for serious disruption to him in particular, though, she abruptly ditches them all and heads to the university. As an aside, based on this and other books I've read, I must say that hanging out a psychotherapist shingle in the U.K. apparently takes far less education than here in the United States, so maybe that's why she saw no problem leaving her patients to fend for themselves while she was away. On the way to Cambridge, she encounters a determined young man named whose words and actions give Mariana the creeps similar to those she got from her patient.

When she arrives, Zoe tells her aunt that the murdered girl, Tara, told her that Edward Fosca had threatened to kill her and is, in fact, Tara's killer. A rather offbeat but extremely popular professor of Greek Tragedy at Cambridge, Fosca has a special following of young female students known as The Maidens. But at least one colleague of Fosca's refutes Zoe's remarks, and the police shut Mariana's theories down from the git-go (it was worthy of note to me that the chief inspector reveals far more information to a suspect that any U.S. cop ever would - but then maybe I've just watched too many TV shows.

Of course, Mariana doesn't believe Fosca protestations of innocence, or the police or university powers-that-be; instead, she's convinced that solving the murder is up to her. As such, she chooses to ignore her groups back home for a while longer to spend a few more days to investigate on her own (at this point, I actually wondered if this is supposed to be a cozy mystery - Mariana fits that heroine pattern perfectly). She soon learns that Fosca's Maidens bear uncanny similarity to relics in the little Greek town where her Sebastian died, making her (and readers) suspect a possible connection. And then, the body of another Maiden turns up.

Mariana's investigation turns up more dead ends than real clues, and her continual digging around becomes offensive to other characters as well (Fosca among them). But like those cozy heroines, she barges ahead even when the police strongly advise her to butt out. All this leads to an action-packed ending that brings at least one relatively unexpected twist.

It was the ending, though, that pretty much did me in. I felt much the same reaction that I had to the April 1978 finale of The Bob Newhart Show when he and his wife, played by the wonderful Suzanne Pleshette, wake up and we all learned that the entire series had been a dream. On the one hand, I applauded the creativity; on the other, I was also frustrated that I, and all the other viewers, had spent four years watching a story that in one sense was totally irrelevant. Such was the case here; the ending brought things to  a conclusion of sorts, but also brought the realization that much of what went on before was there as a distraction, not substance. Besides that, one of the crucial time frames simply did not add up unless one of the characters was far more of a pervert that I thought, and I never learned what happened to one of the characters in whom I had an interest.

So while overall this is a decent story - definitely worth a read on a warm summer beach and one I believe many readers will love - it isn't one I'm particularly excited about. I do thank the publisher, via NetGalley, for allowing me to read and review an advance copy.

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides (Celadon Books, June 2021); 352 pp.

THE SILENT PATIENT

5 stars out of 5


Two revelations in the interest of full disclosure: I won an advance copy of this book through BookishFirst; and, about a third of the way through, I had what turned out to be a spot-on brain niggle about how it would end (the who, not the why). That acknowledged, I'll simply say Wow! If this doesn't hit the big leagues among 2019 releases, I'll be shocked and thoroughly disappointed. 

The patient, Alicia Berenson, is an intriguing character; living, if you want to call it that, in a mental health facility for the past six years or so, she was found guilty of murdering her photographer-husband Gabriel in cold blood and subsequently deemed "mad." From the time she was found standing near his just-killed body, she has never uttered a single word. Enter forensic psychotherapist Theo Faber, who has learned about the case and is so  intent on "healing" her that he leaves his job at a successful clinic to join the financially shaky Grove, where Alicia is an over-medicated resident. Through chapter shifts, readers get information on Alicia's childhood, her work as a painter, her marriage and their family and friends. Interspersed are excerpts from a diary she's been writing in secret. Among the revelations? A strange man may have been stalking her.

But the bottom line is that for the real story to be known - or at least Alicia's version of it - she must find and use her voice. That's been Theo's goal from the beginning, but he has to fight not only the facility's higher-ups - most of whom have been treating and working with Alicia for years and have concluded that she's incurable - but also a very determined-to-remain-silent patient.

All that happens from that point on makes for great reading - and a book I highly recommend to anyone who loves psychological thrillers. Thanks again to the publisher for the opportunity to read and review it.

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (Celadon Books, February 2019); 336 pp.