So, this was the first Lippman I've ever read and I don't read much in the way of mystery or suspense with any regularity. I grabbed this because the jacket copy looked vaguely Misery-ish and indeed, Lippman's afterword acknowledges it as inspiration. It is very well done professional just-one-step-away from fan fiction.

The best part, by far, was how well and how tightly Lippman wrote the main character, novelist Gerry Andersen. As a reader, I default to sympathy for whomever is presented as the center of the story. The best authors know how to subvert or repurpose this and Lippman did it as a tour de force. I want to say "guns blazing" but it was very, very subtle. I had some emergency surgery just before I started this, so I was lying on the couch, recuperating and Gerry was lying in the bed, recuperating and while the urge to identify was strong, Gerry became increasingly unreliable. At two-thirds of the way through the book, I wanted to personally kick him in the actual, broken tailbone butt. What an ass. An ass!! So well done.

When it all came together, it came together. I recall specifically feeling a one-off moment of gratitude for how little I read this genre, because I was able to have the lightning-bolt-to-the-prefrontal-cortex I'm sure (I hope) she was going for when it all finally came together. I decided to just marinate in that for a bit and not kick myself for not putting all the clues together. This was just fun. I had fun with it. In hindsight, I would have liked a little bit more detail on the past that led to the climax, but hey, Andersen is an asshole and even that aided the characterization.

Good times!