Fasten Your Seat Belt

   The Divorce has all the thrills of a roller coaster ride.  The beginning is predictable and even pedestrian.  Then it picks up.  Then it ends.  Or put another way, things are not always what they seem to be.

    Meet Naomi and Jeremy Roth.  A professional, upper middle class husband and wife living in the North Shore of Long Island.  She is a stay at home mom who used to be a doctor (at lease we are led to believe that), and he is an investment banker on the fast track to wealth and success.  They possess all the accoutrements of the social strata that they occupy in a sort of Bonfire Of The Vanities way.  A nice house, Tesla automobile, and, of course, a pampered five year old son named Teddy. Jeremy, in a classic mid-life crisis move, dumps his wife for a younger woman, Veronica or "Ronnie," who appears to want to replace Naomi as Teddy's mother.  This side of the story is told in the first person by Naomi so the reader feels sympathy for her as she is mis-treated and abused by her soon to be ex and his new found arm candy.  Unexplainable things happen to her that make sense only if you believe that Jeremy's new flame is a manipulative, evil vixen.  

    Meet Veronica.  Now we get her side of the story also told in the first person.  And the plot thickens, as they say.   While no angel herself, she is also not the vamp that Naomi believed she was.  Though a former heroin user who dated a junkie, Clay, and had a baby with him, who was kidnapped after Clay crashed his car, she is a sympathetic character.  Through a series of coincidences that are a bit hard to believe, she meets Jeremy at a park and they begin jogging together.  She meets Teddy and immediately suspects that he is her son who vanished a few years ago.  Thus her romance with Jeremy becomes a venture to get her son back.  

    The story goes off the rails in a series of events that are beyond the pale.  Even though not credible, I could not stop turning the pages.  Finally, after hearing from Naomi and Veronica, we are treated to an epilogue by Jeremy.  His level of malevolence makes his wife and girlfriend look like amateurs.  This story starts out slowly but picks up steam and is worth the read and a five star rating!

    

ONE FOOT IN HELL

    Some people are born evil.  And they stay that way.  Meet Larry Crenshaw.  Accountant.  Has all the accoutrements of a middle class American life circa 1960.  Younger wife, nice daughter, house, and a neighborhood that is plucked right out of Norman Rockwell's America.  Except he is a cold blooded murderer who likes to prey on young girls.  The book starts out slowly and is a bit confusing as our protagonist flashes back to when he was a young boy and his mother caught him in an episode of childish sexual exploration with a young auburn haired girl which forever left a psychological scar on his perverted brain.  The girl's name was Lola Riggs.  The experience also left him with a thing for red headed little girls.  Fast forward to his now rudimentary life in a Cincinnati suburb.  He appears to be happy but scratch the surface and the man's homicidal perversions manifest themselves.  The first part of the book tracks his daily existence and the people with whom he interacts.  Boring at times but it picks up very fast once Larry commits not one but two murders of young redheaded girls in the neighborhood who remind him of Lola Riggs.  And speaking of Lola, she, now grown, is living nearby.  Larry seeks refuge with her.  She accommodates him but soon has a come to Jesus moment when the police show up at her house asking questions. It is all downhill from there for Larry.  On a five star scale, I give this book 4/5.  I would have gone a full 5 but the first part of the book is a bit plodding.  A footnote:  the author, Wilene Shaw, is a woman, a bit rare for the genre of the times.  

How To Say Goodbye

One of the most underrated movies ever.  The less you say, the more powerful the message.