Off Script

April 1, 2020
In her third appearance, actress Enora Andressen leads the search for the boy who broke into a woman's flat and threatened her with death before he vanished. Since an accident left the blind Pavel Sieger, her favorite scriptwriter, paralyzed, Enora's dedicated herself to making sure he's well cared for. Now one of his dedicated medical minders, nurse Carrie Tollman, has been the victim of an encounter so harrowing Enora has to drag the details out of her. She awoke to find a teenager bending over her. The intruder stared at her, assured her that he can get through any locked door, attempted to masturbate, and then, when she laughed at him and ordered him to leave, told her that if she shared her story with anyone else, "he'd come back and kill me. Just like he'd killed the others." Sure enough, soon after Enora unearths enough information to allow the Exmouth police to arrest a boy they then have to release for lack of evidence, she returns to Carrie's place to find her slashed to death. Even when an oddly literal clue allows Enora to put a name to the presumed culprit, he's nowhere to be found. Enora's only solace is the distractions of an unwelcome visit from her teenage son, Malo, and a much more welcome romance with builder/sailor/"chancer" Deko, a relationship that despite some exhilarating adventures turns out to have disturbing complications of its own. Not so much mysterious as creepy and just plain sad.

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April 13, 2020
British author Hurley’s bizarre third Enora Andressen thriller (after 2019’s Sight Unseen) takes 40-ish actor Enora, a single mother and brain cancer survivor who sleuths on the side, from her posh London home to Exmouth, where she has been summoned by Carrie Tollman, the nurse for Enora’s blind, paraplegic former lover, Pavel Sieger. Carrie woke up one night recently to find a wild-eyed young man in her bedroom. He threatened to kill her if she mentioned him to anyone, just like he’d killed some unspecified others. Someone later fatally slashes Carrie’s stomach, and a prime suspect goes missing. Enora can’t resist gushing about soirees aboard a fabulous sailboat and visits to a deeply intimate spa as she closes in on a vicious killer. Enora also gets involved with a “big, broad-chested” Dutchman she meets at a pub, a typically impulsive move that lands her in trouble. This erratic outing is unlikely to win Enora new fans. Agent: Oli Munson, A.M. Heath (U.K.).

May 1, 2020
The third installment in Hurley's series featuring British actress Enora Andressen is a first-rate mystery with an exciting premise. Carrie Tollman, Enora's young friend, wakes in the night to find an intruder in her apartment. He says he's killed before and will be back for her if she dares go to the police. Carrie confides in Enora, however, who wastes no time calling the coppers and beginning her own inquiry. As Enora takes over the narrative, we discover, about the same time she does, that many of the people in her life are hiding something. Her lover, Deko, with his beautiful yacht and healthy appetite for sex, has a hidden source of money. The young man who teaches Enora's son about kites has a strange connection with the man who threatened Carrie, and even he is not quite the psycho he seemed. It's all told in a stiff-upper-lip British style that makes the eventual revelations even more powerful.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)