When the kissing stopped and the killing began

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As a genre, perhaps the most important question that the thriller asks is this: do we care sufficiently about the hero to want him (or, of course, her) to survive? In this case the hero is Nick Atkins, who in 1989 is just down from Cambridge. On the brink of law school, he spends time in California, where his life is hijacked by Tabatha, a beautiful Stanford student with a taste for Yeats’s poetry. After several months, Tab abruptly and inexplicably decides that their passionate affair is over and sends him home. She promises to communicate occasionally through cryptic small ads in the California Literary Review.

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Ross Clark

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For the next 17 years, her teasing, allusive messages flow like a dark sub- terranean current through Nick’s life. His ability to decode them depends on his knowledge of Yeats’s and Plath’s poetry, and occasionally other works.