Knife Music

Following the death of a 16-year-old former patient, Dr. Ted Cogan finds himself at the center of a rape and possible murder investigation. In KNIFE MUSIC, David Carnoy has created a novel that is chock-full of suspense. Narrator Kristoffer Tabori adds to the suspense that is created by Carnoy. Tabori has a way of slowly building intensity that truly engages the listener with his aggressive style. While his pacing is disjointed at times, it doesn't prove distracting, but comes off as a quality that is unique to Tabori. Listeners seeking suspense in a mystery will surely find it here. J.R.G. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

May 10, 2010
Carnoy's debut, a thriller set in California's Silicon Valley, fails to deliver on the promise of its intriguing conceit—the degree of a doctor's legal responsibility in a patient's suicide. Shortly before hanging herself from a showerhead, 16-year-old Kristen Kroiter wrote in her diary about having sex with 43-year-old Ted Cogan, a senior trauma surgeon reputed to be a playboy. The doctor treated her in the hospital after she drove her father's Volkswagen Jetta over a curb and struck a telephone pole a few months earlier. Arrested for contributing to Kristen's death, then suspended from his job, Cogan begins playing gumshoe to clear his name. He eventually tracks many of the case's weak underpinnings to a fraternity at nearby Stanford University. Despite a varied cast of characters and some snappy plotting, the story flattens in the middle and struggles to resuscitate itself. Readers who stick around for answers to nagging questions may find it wasn't worth the wait.