John Katzenbach
[Type: Contemporary, Thriller]

"Welcome to the first day of your death."

This sentence is splashed on the jacket of this book--and it captures the crux of the story.

Dr Frederick Starks, a middle-aged psychoanalyst, with his set routine and predictable habits, living alone and running his practice in the same apartment he lives in, is an easy target for a psychopath out to play a game with the doctor the way a cat worries a cockroach before it kills it.

The game is familiar to us--it's the one Rumplestiltskin played in the fairy tale: guess my name and I will let you go, but the consequences of losing are not so simple--if he fails to guess the killer's identity, the doctor must kill himself, else Rumplestiltskin will kill one of the doctor's 52 relatives, all listed out neatly in the threatening letter. Committing suicide goes against everything a psychoanalyst believes in--so what will Dr Starks do? Does he win or die? Is there any escape?

The plot is arresting and unforgettable. Something new keeps happening that makes our pulse race in time with the victim's, and you'll want to put the book down only in an emergency.

As a nitpicky writer, I found that Katzenbach leans a little too heavily on certain clichés and tends to repeat words where I'd have been grateful for a change--for instance people are always 'exiting' a room or a taxi or whatever, the never just leave. He also over-explains and over-emphasizes situations and thoughts in places. But all this is minor and doesn't stand in the way of a Very Good rating for the book.