Old Flames
Jack Ketchum
Leisure, Jun 2008, $7.99
ISBN: 9780843959994
“Old Flames”. In Manhattan Owen dumps his lover Dora Welles by message. She confronts him and the married with children Owen admits he found someone else to be his lover. Dora destroys some of his prized possessions like a seventeenth century vase. At a bar she meets Estha from her high school class of twenty-five years ago. Estha says she hired a private detective who found her teen boyfriend Ralphie. Dora decides to do like wise she hires Flame Finders Joseph Ledo who quickly locates Jim Welbourne, an attorney with a wife and kids living in California. Dora goes west to see if he is the one. If not she will assume her significant other was her late cat Lawrence; but if yes his family will be collateral damage.
“Right to Life”. In1998 Manhattan married with a son Greg Glover is worried about his pregnant lover Sara Foster as he takes her for an abortion. He knows she lost a child in a lake accident that also ended her marriage. He drops her off near the clinic while he goes to park the car. When he arrives at the clinic after dodging the picket line, he asks for Sara, but she has not checked in. He franticly looks for her and obtains help from the cops, but Sara is nowhere. Panicked Greg knows this is not like Sara; what he does not know is Sara is wakening up in a “prison” cell in New Jersey having been abducted by the picketers.
These are two well written exciting psychological horror thrillers that put twists on seemingly everyday people. Readers will appreciate Jack Ketchum’s shockers that take adverse relationships plausibly further than one would expect.
Harriet Klausner
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