Title: The Poet
Author: Stephanie Harris
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 978-1-52467-027-6
Genre: Fiction/Thriller
Pages: 196
Reviewed by: Joe Kilgore
Thrillers come in all shapes and sizes. Too many however, feel as if their plots are constructed from a computer program and their prose scripted via paint-by-numbers pointillism. Such is not the case with Ms. Harris’s tale. While her page-turner is indeed packed with intrigue, violence, and suspense, it is also anchored with full-bodied characterization, secured with credible plausibility, and sprinkled throughout with dialogue refreshingly void of cliché or caricature.
There are two primary characters at the heart of this novel. Rebecca is a thirty- something hospital administrator schooled in psychology. She’s good at her job but more than ready for the vacation she’s been planning for some time. The long-term relationship she’s in has atrophied beyond repair and she’s in need of a serious jolt of sexual self-confidence. Fortunately, she meets Jack. He, unknown initially to her, is a paid assassin who’s excellent at his chosen profession and more than a little complex psychologically. He’s not overtly aware that he’s in need of anything, but both wind up at the same woodsy getaway and a strange relationship begins amid all manner of mayhem. Aficionados of the genre may feel echoes of Maxwell Anderson’s Key Largo or Robert Sherwood’s The Petrified Forest, but those hostages-in-distress dramas while tangentially similar to this yarn, only modestly addressed the disturbing psychosexual and brutishly violent behavior Harris is more than willing to tackle head-on. Be prepared for graphic language that pulls no punches when it comes to descriptions of the evil people are capable of inflicting on one another.
While the narrative above is unfolding, the author simultaneously interweaves the bizarre backstory of Jack’s checkered history. It’s a tale filled with an interesting combination of literature, religion, love, loyalty, and the virtual absence of moral absolutes. Before you know it, savage cruelty is being unloosed, devastating retribution is being doled out, and loose ends are being braided so they can all eventually be neatly tied.
Amid all the high-powered testosterone from Jack, and Rebecca’s total refusal to be victim to her own demise, a spark is ignited that turns this heretofore potboiler into a reflective query on the nature of male/female relationships. The slide from one to the other doesn’t feel at all forced—nor does the question of whether these two can survive their histories and themselves.
The Poet, while never attempting to be lyrical, is that rare nail-biter that may prove itself as appealing to admirers of love stories as it is to hardboiled action buffs. Rather a neat trick in this day and age.
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