The Last Girl: A Psychological Thriller

With chilling first-person narration, Evans inhabits the mind of a psychopath, balancing her case study and a tensely comic undercurrent with a precision quite remarkable in a first novel. Larry Mann, 72, appears harmless. He rents an apartment in a small London townhouse where he's lived alone for 12 years, since his wife left, he tells us. When lonely college student Amanda ``Mandy'' Tyson moves into the building, Larry immediately decides that she is ``different'' from other women and barrages her with gifts and overtures of friendship (including a clock radio and elaborate surprise meals). Mandy's efforts at distancing herself from Larry are thwarted not only by her good manners but also because she identifies with him: she realizes that they're both lonely and in need of company. But after she starts bringing home her lover (a married man), Larry's obsession turns actively threatening. Throughout, Evans evokes layers of menace in Larry's casual, chatty voice: Larry often refers to himself in the third person; his days are filled with what he calls ``the waiting and the listening''--his constant monitoring of Mandy's every move; he misinterprets events (and himself) so that they conform with his fantasies. The grim finale doesn't surprise; but Evans's intense, unrelenting focus on Larry's frightening and frighteningly funny way of thinking (``Honestly, if I didn't know any better, I'd think she was trying to avoid me'') makes this taut literary thriller nearly impossible to put down. (Jan).