Nightfall - Hardcover

Mildly involving suspense in which a high-school teacher is harassed by an obsessed student, himself the victim of parental neglect and abuse. Marlowe is also the author of Secrets (1992) and Heart's Desire (1991). Rebecca, at 32, is settled into a comfortable house in suburban Connecticut and is dating Ray, a handsome, attentive--and married--type in insurance who lies through his teeth about his marital situation. Meanwhile, Ray's frantic wife is making life sheer hell for son Pete, nagging and hurling insults, and Pete--the teenager who had jumped defiantly in front of Rebecca's car one rainy night and is alternately high and low on whatever drugs he can get--becomes convinced that Rebecca is the cause of the breakup of his family. Before long, Pete homes in: Rebecca's flowers are destroyed, foul matter is delivered, and unbeknownst to her, he has found her crawl space. In the meantime, Rebecca is also worried about best friend Agnes, former actress and head of the English department, who's beginning to talk to a teddy bear and even lugs it to school. Somewhere along the line, as Rebecca's terror grows, a policeman (with degrees and a classy background, of course) takes an interest. Solutions all around are neat as a pin--with the victims compensated in one way or another, and the mean and crazies run to ground. Easy-going, moderate suspense. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In this domestic thriller by the author of Secrets , unforeseen danger invades a previously safe world. High school English teacher Rebecca Leighton leads a calm, even boring life in a quiet Connecticut town until an anonymous stalker begins threatening her. Her tormentor paints her skylights black, destroys her garden and laces her tea with LSD. Though the police say they can't help, one enigmatic detective is drawn to both Rebecca and her case. Could Ray, the strangely secretive man with whom she has just ended an affair, be the source of these horrifying pranks, or is the culprit his troubled son, who blames all his misery on his father's girlfriend? Further complicating Rebecca's life is the depression and strange behavior of her best friend, Agnes. By the time Rebecca discovers the identity of her stalker, her sedate existence has been permanently altered, in some ways for the better. Marlowe successfully depicts the danger and mental instability that lie just beneath the surface of small-town life, and her narrative style is smooth. However, her story lacks the vividness of character and degree of action needed to build an atmosphere of terror.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.