The Reunion: A Novel - Hardcover

Walker, Sue

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060726091 ISBN 13: 9780060726096

Publisher: William Morrow, 2004

Synopsis

Innes? Innes, it's Isabella. Isabella Velasco ... Don't ask me how I got hold of you ... We live quite close, you know, would you believe? God, you sound just the same. Just the same! ... I need to talk to you ... see you. Can you call me as soon as you can?

Innes Haldane, who as a teen was deemed out of control both physically and sexually, has made every attempt to put that stage of her life behind her. Until a voice from the past leaves a message on her answering machine and an obituary with a familiar name interrupts her quiet life.

In 1977, Innes was one of seven dysfunctional teenagers incarcerated in the Unit, an avant-garde psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Edinburgh. She and her fellow inmates -- Danny, a rapist by age fourteen; Carrie, whose mother's boyfriends always found her more attractive than her drug-addict mother; Lydia, who as a grossly overweight teenager retreated into a severely manic-depressive world; Simon, whose domineering mother blamed him for the death of his twin; Alexandra, a member of thesocial upper class who revolted against her parents; and Isabella, who suffered at the hands of a prominent yet highly abusive father and a vain, jealous mother -- were forced into one another's lives, exposed to one another's pasts, and now share a collective memory.

Since then, they have spent their adult lives trying to forget the unspeakable acts that sent them to the Unit and the terrible secret that occurred behind its walls. But a murderer is stalking the former patients and the only way to save themselves is by reuniting -- no matter what the emotional cost. If the killer doesn't shatter their new lives, the memories being brought back to life just might.

Now Innes must contact the others before someone else finds them first ...

About this title

About the Author:

Sue Walker is an investigative television journalist who has spent much of her time working on high-end crime-related documentaries. She has worked for the BBC and all of the U.K. networks on a range of prestigious programs. Born in Edinburgh, she now lives in London. The Reunion is her first novel.

From Publishers Weekly:

A shared, violent past haunts former patients of an Edinburgh adolescent psych unit in BBC reporter Walker's uneven debut thriller. In 2004, Innes Haldane, a graduate of the Unit, learns of the death of one of her former Unit friends, Isabella "Abby" Velasco. Flashing between the present and 1977, when the teens were institutionalized together, Walker shows her characters as deeply troubled kids and as variously disturbed adults plagued by guilty memories of a camping trip gone wrong. What happened back then? And does it spell death today? When Innes leaves her London job to look into Abby's alleged suicide, she learns that just before her death, Abby had started seeing Danny Rintoul, an accused rapist and former occupant of the Unit. Danny, she quickly learns, is another suspected suicide. Meanwhile, heartless stockbroker Alex Baxendale, another Unit grad, resists uncovering long-buried secrets, and Dr. Simon Caldwell, also a former Unit resident, is looking for clues to his daughter's kidnapping. Walker gives her characters so many secrets—and keeps hinting around at that old, big one—that it can be exhausting. She characterizes and summarizes hurriedly, rushing from one revelation to the next, and the psychology is often shallow (bad behavior is blamed on bad parents and bad therapy; redemption is found in confession and good therapy). But the ending offers many grisly surprises.
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About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0060726091
• ISBN 13: 9780060726096
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320