DEATH OF THE BLACK HAIRED GIRL (12/05/2013)





A long time blog follower contacted me concerning a book she had just completed. "DEATH OF THE BLACK HAIRED GIRL by Robert Stone is a fast paced thriller and held my interest throughout" she said. "Not only were the characters complex, but the traditional college affair had a whole new twist!"

I've just finished WE ARE WATER by Walley Lamb (See review below...) and am looking for something light, engaging and a quick read. Although this may not totally fulfill all my requirements, it sounds less disturbing than the Wally Lamb book, which I loved in spite of it......and that says a lot.


Here's an excerpt from a NYTIMES review of DEATH OF THE BLACK HAIRED GIRL..... 

The outward plot of "Black-Haired Girl" is a simple, noirish tale of adultery gone awry: A writer and professor named Steven Brookman is cheating on his wife with one of his students, Maud Stack, a beautiful, black-haired girl; when Brookman learns that his wife is pregnant, he attempts to break things off with Maud; a drunken Maud decides to confront Brookman at home, and, moments after an argument with him, is killed in a hit-and-run accident in front of his house; Brookman is suspected of pushing her in front of the car.

Parts of this story might have been inspired by a 1998 case in which a Yale student was brutally killed, and a Yale lecturer, who had been her thesis adviser, was named as a suspect. (This year, the lecturer received a settlement in a lawsuit he had brought against Yale and the City of New Haven, which claimed that he had been wrongly singled out, and that his reputation and career had been damaged; the investigation remains open.)

Brookman is not the only suspect in Maud's death. There is also a mysterious and sinister man who was enraged by an incendiary article Maud wrote for the college paper, attacking anti-abortion protestors — a man who reminds Maud's school counselor, a former nun named Jo Carr, of a dangerous revolutionary priest who she knew had been involved in some of South America's most violent atrocities........

Even as "Death of the Black-Haired Girl" barrels along towards its melancholy end, the result is at once a Hawthorne-like allegory and a sure-footed psychological thriller.


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