Vanished in the Dunes

May 21, 2012
Retzky’s plodding first novel references classic predecessors like Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, but fails to generate much suspense. Since Amos Posner was unjustly fired from his international trading position in Manhattan, he’s been living at his beach house in Amagansett with occasional visits to the city. His wife, who suspects he’s been unfaithful, has stopped visiting him on weekends. One morning on the Hampton Jitney, Posner meets the seductive Heidi Kashani, a resident in psychiatry at Mt. Sinai hospital, who persuades him to show her his beach house. When Posner returns to the house after briefly leaving Heidi alone there, he finds her dead from an apparent fall. Posner’s decision to bury her eventually brings Det. Peter Wisdom to his door and later Heidi’s obsessed lover, Dr. Henry Stern. Enter Brigid Kashani, Heidi’s look-alike sister, who adds a wild card to this three-cornered game. A climactic confrontation leads to a disappointing resolution. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media.

July 1, 2012

Disgraced Wall Street commodities trading executive Amos Posner hangs around his Hamptons beach house while his wife continues to work in Manhattan. Their relationship is strained by the shadow of guilt hanging over Amos, who appears to have been a convenient fall guy for his company's dubious practices. While on the bus that runs between New York City and the Hamptons, Amos enters into a conversation with a mysteriously seductive woman, Heidi Kashani. She wrangles a visit to his home, and while Amos runs an errand in the local village, she is killed. Amos panics and buries her body, rather than contacting the police, but he hasn't counted on a determined local detective, Heidi's tormented lover, or her sister showing up. Now we're really talking fall guy. VERDICT Dostoyevsky lives! This debut psychological thriller's stomach-tightening tension builds as the growing cast of players demonstrates how bad choices rarely pay off. For fans of moral conundrum authors, such as Jo Bannister and Scott Turow.

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