cover image Kill Me First

Kill Me First

Kate Morgenroth. HarperCollins Publishers, $24 (259pp) ISBN 978-0-06-019275-4

""Nobody likes... to think of themselves as doing anything to stay alive. They think they'd say, `Kill me first.' "" These words from kidnap victim Patty Hearst set up this debut novel from a former marketing assistant at HarperCollins, but they hardly prepare readers for the intensely absorbing story to come. Sarah Shepherd, 51, has lost her husband in a car accident and despairs of her own life. She gets placed in a nursing home that has been targeted for a terrorist act by Merec, a brilliant sociopath sought by the CIA. This elusive international criminal picks his team by pitting them against one another with loaded weapons: whoever survives makes the first cut. On the Fourth of July, Merec's band gathers the home's residents together and kills most of them. Sarah shows such spunk that Merec keeps her as a hostage. His videotapes of her torture make her a media star, which provides momentum for a plan that will dupe the country and defile one of New York City's most sacred shrines. The videotapes alert Agent Tresler, an FBI man on Merec's trail, to what the killer has in mind, but he can't stop the horrifying act. Nor can he guess the unexpected kink in Merec's plan--for Merec falls for Sarah and offers her the chance to escape. She declines, having decided that she will have a more stimulating life with Merec than on her own. Her decision--while straining credulity--turns the tables as the captor meets his match. This is a clever and unusual thriller, unflinching in its violence, economic in its plotting and unpredictable in its psychological developments. (May)