On Borrowed Time-David Rosenfelt

On Borrowed Time
David Rosenfelt
Minotaur, Feb 15 2011, $24.99
ISBN 9780312598365

Manhattan based reporter Richard Kilmer and his lover Jennifer Ryan drive from their apartment on the Upper West Side to her hometown to meet her family in Kendrick Falls. He plans to ask her to marry him. However, they have an accident, but eerily somehow before they finish the two hour drive, Jen vanished.

Stunned with no clues as to his beloved’s whereabouts, Richard meets the family he thought would be his in-laws. Shocked further after meeting her family when they insist she is not their kin; her friends deny knowing a Jennifer Ryan. Finally even his friends claim they never met her. As a catharsis, Richard writes articles for a magazine about his recent trauma. Allison Tynes comes from Wisconsin to New York to meet Richard as she insists she is Jen's identical twin; leaving the journalist further bewildered.

This suspense thriller grips the reader once the car accident occurs and never let’s the audience go even after the climax as the audience will ponder what happened to the key characters especially the beleaguered protagonist who sadly muses that he entered the Twilight Zone. To David Rosenfelt’s credit and writing skills he never ventures in to the Serling realm. With Andy Carpenter on respite, fans will still relish this taut thriller as like Kilmer will wonder what is going on.

Harriet Klausner