Meeting Evil

A seemingly random act of kindness plunges stressed-out real estate agent John Felton into the twisted world of a recently released psychopath. In the tradition of the best movies of Hitchcock, Berger forces his "everyman" into an impossible moral situation and ratchets up the anxiety to an unbearable level. Narrator Bronson Pinchot masterfully aids and abets Berger's ever-tightening noose of tension by adding a creepy sycophantic tone to the madman's voice. While the first half drags a bit, Pinchot powers up the narrative in the second half, changing tempo and tone as the story moves to its chilling ending. R.O. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

June 1, 1992
Berger's ( Orrie's Story ) powerful 19th novel investigates the familiar question of why bad things happen to good people. John Felton, realtor in a ``medium-sized city'' in the Northeast, is a paradigm of decency, a ``respectable man with a wife and children'' and a ``lifetime urge to do right.'' John's nightmare begins at breakfast one morning, when he opens his door to a stranger and agrees to help with his stalled car. The car turns out to have been stolen and the stranger to have been released from a psychiatric hospital that very morning, and John's Good Samaritan deed is rewarded with a catastrophic day that snowballs into a whirlwind crime spree. After a cocktail waitress sideswipes the car, the three become a team, running up charges of hit-and-run, breaking and entering, theft, kidnapping, arson and murder. Victim and victimizer intertwine in a heart-pounding conclusion at a convenience store, and cosmic justice is meted out. Berger couches his frightening, paranoic plot with moral and philosophical underpinnings in sardonic, impeccable `fluid prose' in previous review prose.