Doll's Eyes - Hardcover

Wood, Bari

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688124402 ISBN 13: 9780688124403

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1993

Synopsis

Eve Tilden Klein, a scion of an upstanding Connecticut family, finds that the clairvoyance she has inherited from her mother is more a curse than a blessing

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Wood wrote three occult novels in the 80's (Amy Girl, 1987, etc.), but her current publisher is promoting her as the author of Twins (1977)--a telling comment on a sagging career that may lift a bit with this vivid if formulaic mix of occult and serial-killer chills. This time, Wood's usual Lady Luckless is poor little rich girl Eve Klein, whose millions can't buy her relief from her other inheritance: the clairvoyant powers that have recently frightened off her husband, Sam. Hoping to confront him, Eve drives from her Connecticut estate to Sam's new house in Raven Lake, New York, where she's instantly felled by a vision of a woman mutilated and dying--the handiwork of local sociopath Adam Fuller, M.D., whose eyes (``empty...dead...glassy. Like a doll's eyes'') give away his utter inability to feel for others, the product of a buried childhood trauma: Fuller kills in the barren hope of feeling pity for his victims. Eve's call to the cops snares homicide legend Dave Latovsky, who takes her to see psychiatrist Terrence Bunner, who happens to have Fuller as a patient. When, at a party, Bunner lets on to Fuller that Eve--whom he won't identify--saw the killer in her vision, the mad M.D. tracks a gory path to the psychic, torturing and shooting Bunner, then a local newsman and his wife, to get Eve's name and address. Meanwhile, at Bunner's funeral, Latovsky notes Fuller's Ken-doll eyes and fingers him for the killer but can't nab him before Fuller snatches Eve, hauling her to his childhood home. There, Eve flashes on the child abuse that turned Fuller into a maniac.... A lurid, loose-jointed tale whose frantic action and emotionalism nearly obscure the familiarity (Koontz, King, etc.) of Wood's themes. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

This latest from the author of Twins is a nerve-snapping, stomach-churning thriller. Wealthy Eve Klein has the unenviable ability to see the future when she touches people or even something associated with them. Although her unusual gift occasionally comes in handy, it has also driven away her husband, who doesn't want to live in a psychic fishbowl. Hoping for a reconciliation, she follows him to a lakeside bungalow in the Adirondacks where a small boy was tortured decades earlier. Now grown, the one-time victim tracks down women, mutilating and killing them. At first, all Eve can see of him is light brown hair and tassled loafers near a puddle of blood, but as a local cop insists that she use her power, the killer's dead, brown eyes begin to haunt her visions, and it becomes clear he's hunting for her, too. Despite a spate of foolish set-ups that a child of six would know enough to avoid, Wood's page-turner nurtures a creeping dread that blooms into fully realized fears. Toward the end, Eve becomes a horrific Scheherazade, spilling dark, pain-filled secrets the killer's psyche has locked away for good reason. Literary Guild alternate .
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0688124402
• ISBN 13: 9780688124403
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 303