A Perfect Crime

August 31, 1998
A Boston woman's ill-advised affair with a talk-show host leads to murder and mayhem in this initially absorbing but somewhat contrived thriller from the author of The Fan and Lights Out. Art critic Francie Cullingwood is the beautiful, sophisticated and dissatisfied protagonist who seeks sexual satisfaction outside her stale marriage. Her lover is Ned DeMarco, a handsome, touchy-feely psychiatrist who hosts a radio show for the emotionally forlorn. Their passionate arrangement begins to unravel when Roger, Francie's brilliant but angry husband (a Harvard summa who's been fired from his job as a securities analyst), suspects her adultery and hires a hit man, Whitey Truax, to exact revenge on his spouse. Truax, it turns out, is a serial killer with a very short fuse. The tension rises as Abrahams cuts between the plot participants: Ned's wife, Anne, becomes Francie's tennis partner, making Francie aware of the damage the affair is causing, while Ned desperately clings to their involvement and Roger plots his bizarre campaign of retribution. The initial showdown between Whitey and his potential victims takes place at the adulterous couple's love nest, a New Hampshire cottage that quickly becomes a house of horrors when Whitey suspects Roger of double-crossing him, and runs amok on a killing spree that eventually leads back to Boston. Abrahams does his best work in a series of well-crafted early scenes that effectively convey the different levels of emotional duplicity among the protagonists, but the actual murders are strictly formulaic. While Francie, Ned and Anne are well-drawn, Abrahams's portrayals of both Roger and his minion lack dimension; they are both plot devices whose ludicrous partnership never carries the ring of credibility. Even so, as he explores Francie's emotional terrain in the wake of tragedy, Abrahams will keep readers very much engaged. Agent, Molly Friedrich; 100,000 first printing.

August 1, 1998
The discovery of an adulterous affair leads a brilliant but unstable man to plot the perfect murder. Francie and Ned, both married to others, meet illicitly at a cabin in the New Hampshire woods. Francie decides to end the affair when she discovers that her new tennis partner is Ned's wife, who suspects Ned of being unfaithful but is unaware of Francie's involvement. Francie's husband, Roger, suspects, too--and plots a deadly trap for the lovers at their remote hideaway. Edgar-nominee Abrahams (The Fan, LJ 2/1/95) weaves a tight web of deception and intrigue involving the two couples, a sheriff whose wife was brutally murdered years ago, and a desperate ex-con who becomes Roger's pawn in his murderous game. A Perfect Crime is fast-paced, tense, even witty as it careens to its bloody conclusion. Recommended for all public libraries.--Karen Anderson, Arizona State Univ. West Lib., Phoenix

Starred review from July 1, 1998
Proper Bostonian Roger Cullingwood thinks the good life is his birthright. He has an IQ of 181, a Harvard pedigree, a tony Beacon Hill home, and a beautiful wife named Francie who buys art for a foundation and plays a mean game of tennis. His Kevlar ego is barely scratched by a year's unemployment and the fact that he and Francie are just going through the motions. But when he learns that Francie is having an affair, he begins to create a calculus for a perfect, and perfectly brutal, crime. Needing to indulge his heroically outsized ego, that calculus inevitably requires the manipulation of a lesser being as his instrument of revenge. This literary thriller has a great deal going for it. The characters are as acutely realized as if painted by a photo-realist--not just Roger and Francie but also Whitey Truax, Roger's stupidly cunning psychopathic tool; Anne Franklin, the lovely but vulnerable wife of Francie's lover; and Joe Savard, a rural New Hampshire police chief who sculpts with a chainsaw. The plotting, and the plot twists, are complex and compelling. The dialogue is sharp and almost flawless, exposing facets of character without need for narrative that might slow the pace. And it's satisfying: there's sex and violence, but there's also a subtle sense of the mathematical certainty to the denouement. ((Reviewed July 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)