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BOOKS
Panic Attack is Jason Starr's ninth novel. It's a thriller with the tension coming from a planned murder hanging over every page. Starr perfectly creates the set-up and then teases us with the innocence of the victims playing right into the hand of the killer.
This is classic thriller fiction, where the point is to create an adrenaline rush of page-turning curiosity. It's entertainment from beginning to end, and Starr carries it off with talent.
The story opens with two thieves breaking into the house of the wealthy Adam and Dana Bloom late at night. Adam gets his gun. He shoots and kills one intruder on his way to the upstairs bedrooms, while the other one escapes unseen.
The plot thickens when the dead intruder is identified as the boyfriend of the Bloom's maid Gabriela, and then she turns up dead the next day. Even more thickening comes with mysterious threatening notes slipped under the Bloom's front door and Dana's messy affair with a body builder at her gym.
The key to what's going on is the other intruder – Johnny Long. He's intent on avenging his partner's murder. And so he charms his way into becoming the boyfriend of the Bloom's daughter Marissa to gain the family. Marissa is a live-at-home Vassar grad with a degree in art history. She writes a blog that gives Johnny all the information he needs to craft an attractive persona – he becomes Xan Evonov, a struggling artist.
I couldn't help but see times when the Blooms should realize something's not quite right about Johnny. I could detail them here, but it's not a valid complaint. In thriller fiction it's a given that there's a thin line between what's realistic and what isn't. Also, character development is not to be expected, so we spend time with rather shallow people who have to lack discernment for the plot to work.
Starr has created Adam, Dana and Marissa to be so arrogant and self-involved that it wouldn't fit their personalities to have insight.
When Johnny begins to fulfill his murderous plan, the plot gets more intense. He catches Dana alone in the house one evening, and he drugs Marissa when she's at his apartment. I'm not going to give away the details other than to say murder does happen.
One quibble: Starr loses a bit of his fast, well-contrived pacing in the final chapters. He needs to wrap up the action more quickly than he does.
Even so, he kept me guessing to the very end who would survive and who wouldn't.
Panic Attack by Jason Starr is published by Minotaur Books. I'm Kassie Rose.
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