PERFECT NIGHTMARE

Book ID/图书代码： 06830005B09211

English Summary/英文概要： If you open your house to strangers, who knows who might come in. And what they might be after. Or whom. Now, ponder the unthinkable and surrender to your darkest dread, as sinister storyteller extraordinaire John Saul weaves a heart-stopping tale of lurking terror and twisted intent.

Every parent’s nightmare becomes reality for Kara Marshall when her daughter, Lindsay, vanishes from her bedroom during the night. The police suspect that the girl is just another moody teenage runaway, angry over leaving behind her school and friends because her family is moving. But Lindsay’s recent eerie claim–that someone invaded her room when the house was opened to prospective buyers–drives Kara to fear the worst: a nameless, faceless stalker has walked the halls of her home in search of more than a place to live.

Patrick Shields recognizes Kara’s pain–and carries plenty of his own since he lost his wife and two children in a devastating house fire. But more than grief draws Patrick and Kara together. He, too, senses the hand of a malevolent stranger in this tragedy. And as more people go missing from houses up for sale, Patrick’s suspicion, like Kara’s, blooms into horrified certainty.

Someone is trolling this peaceful community–undetected and undeterred–harvesting victims for a purpose no sane mind can fathom. Someone Kara and Patrick, alone and desperate, are determined to unmask. Someone who is even now watching, plotting, keeping a demented diary of unspeakable deeds . . . and waiting until the time is ripe for another fateful visit.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 假如你打开门让陌生人进入，天知道谁会进入，什么会发生。奇才作家John Saul此次又编造出一个让人惊心动魄的惊险故事，不可思议的事情发生了，人们最恐惧的事情也接踵迩来，潜伏的恐怖行动、扭曲的阴谋，一切都让我们感觉快要窒息。
一晚Kara Marshall的女儿神秘失踪，噩梦降临在Kara一家。警察怀疑这又是一起青少年离家出走案，怀疑他女儿因为搬家不得不离开自己的学校和朋友们而感到困惑。但是Kara回忆起女儿曾经说过在让客人看房子的时候有人闯入过她的房间这样奇怪的话，这让身为母亲的Kara不得不担心是否曾有一个无名隐形杀手带着不良企图侵入她女儿的房间。
Patrick Shields和Kara处境相似，感同身受，因为几年前在一场大火中他失去了他的妻子和两个孩子。两人走到一起，并肩作战，把他们联系到一起的不仅是他们相似的遭遇，而是Patrick也相信在这场悲剧中有一只恶毒的手在操纵着局势。随着同类案件的接连发生，两人的怀疑得到了进一步的验证。
有人暗地里在原本平静的社区里兴风作浪，把大家的生活搅得鸡犬不宁。这个人就是Kara和Patrick要找的那个恶毒之手，这个人在关注着局势并伺机给这里的人们来个致命一击。

Awards/获奖情况："John Saul takes the psychological suspense novel to a new height." ---The Dayton Voice

A creepy stalker story becomes a shrewd whodunit as Saul’s latest tracks a move from tranquil suburbia to the big city. After a job promotion, the Marshall family prepares to move from Long Island to Manhattan, unaware that a menace edges ever closer to kidnapping their teenage daughter, Lindsay. Eerie first-person chapters from the stalker’s close-call perspective effectively counterpoint parents Kara and Steve Marshall’s stressful relocation hurdles, as intuitive Kara begins sensing the imminence of the threat, but meets with resistance from harried family members. After the anonymous menace snatches Lindsay, Saul broadens the scope to encompass four likely male suspects, including a pair of real estate agents (one dour and one impossibly chipper). Steve Marshall conveniently dies in a car accident; police sergeant Andrew Grant is cautious and unconvinced of foul play. Lindsay’s attempts to escape and the criminal’s master plan keep the tension high and the plot accelerating, making this solid suspense from the veteran author of Suffer the Children and the Blackstone Chronicles series. ---From Publishers Weekly

Saul’s take on the sexual-psychopath thriller, whose grand master is surely Thomas Harris in Red Dragon (1981) and The Silence of the Lambs (1988), and whose unacknowledged master is Whitley Strieber in Billy (1990), is a more disquieting book than Saul may have intended. As a literary performance, it doesn’t give Harris and Strieber much competition, for its Long Island setting and relentlessly middle-class characters lead Saul into bland prose and shallow psychology. And the mainspring of its plot--who has snatched two pretty teen girls and a twentysomething young mother?--is unexceptional and generically shopworn. Fortunately, by interspersing the thoughts of the perverted perp throughout a third-person text otherwise following either the mother of the second girl kidnapped or the girl herself, Saul adds considerable nasty fascination, though that fascination affords the kind of pleasure that many may think they damn well ought to feel guilty about. What is genuinely upsetting about the book is its depressing implication that hands held out in loving compassion are precisely what shouldn’t be trusted. That rather flies in the face of the mother’s love that drives the main character (who is eminently trustworthy), and it makes for a brackish, disturbing ending.---Ray Olson, From Booklist

About the Author/作者介绍： JOHN SAUL’s first novel, Suffer the Children, published in 1977, was an immediate million-copy bestseller. He has since written twenty-three successive bestselling novels of suspense, including Nightshade, The Right Hand of Evil, The Presence, Black Lightning, Guardian, and The Homing. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling serial thriller The Blackstone Chronicles, initially published in six installments but now available in one complete volume. Mr. Saul divides his time between Seattle, Washington, and Maui, Hawaii.
完美的噩梦这本书是作者John Saul的第三十二本小说。他1977年出版的第一部小说Suffer the children一出版便获得百万销量。他的另一些悬疑畅销小说包括Black Creek Crossing, Midnight Voices, The Manhattan Hunt Club等等。他也是纽约时报畅销惊悚小说系列The Blackstone Chronicles的作者。作者在西雅图、华盛顿、夏威夷三地间频繁来回。

Format:HARDCOVER

Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE

Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE

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