MEETING EVIL
Book ID/图书代码： 03890010B42983
English Summary/英文概要： John Felton meets evil late one Monday morning when the doorbell rings. Standing on the front porch is a stranger. He wears expensive running shoes and a baseball cap and calls himself Richie. He tells John his car has stalled and asks for help. An altercation at the gas station leads to a shocking crime as violence begets violence. At the end of this harrowing day, John returns home to find Richie ensconced in his living room, chatting up his wife. The evil has somehow seeped into his life. Thus begins the transformation of an unremarkable husband and father of two into a desperate man willing to go to any length to protect his family from the darkness that threatens them.
Now a major motion picture starring Samuel L. Jackson and Luke Wilson.
Chinese Summary/中文概要： 最近的一个星期一早晨，John Felton去应门时遇到了恶魔。一个自称Richie的陌生人站在走廊上，他穿着昂贵的跑鞋,戴着棒球帽。他对John说他的车抛锚了,请求John的帮助。在加油站发生的口角引发了一个接一个的暴力犯罪。这苦恼的一天结束的时候,John回到家中却发现Richie在他的卧室里坐着,与他的妻子闲谈。这个恶魔已经潜入他的生活。这让一个平凡的丈夫同时是两个孩子的父亲逐渐变成了一个绝望的男人，想要竭尽全力保护家人远离黑暗的威胁。
现已翻拍动作电影，由塞缪尔•杰克逊和卢克•威尔逊主演。（Pêche）
Awards/获奖情况：版权已售:French,Spanish,Audio rights
“（Thomas Berger） 是美国最诙谐最优雅的小说家。”——《村声杂志》
“少量的、一丝不苟的散文……唤起人性的弱点和愤怒。”——《华盛顿邮报》
“一部巧妙时髦的黑色喜剧。”——《旧金山纪事报》
“一本杰出的却让人困扰的书。”——《芝加哥论坛报》
The worst day in the life of struggling suburban realtor John Felton: from the doorbell’s morning ring on through a rising spiral of violence to a teasingly ambiguous midnight climax--when John finally has to deal with the smiling, homicidal nemesis/double responsible for ruining his life. The man at the door, calling himself only Richie, wants John to push his stalled car to the edge of the downgrade; but, later, John doesn’t want to walk back up the hill, and while he waits for Richie (who seems somehow deeply unsettling) to give him a lift home, Richie’s car gets dented by another car driven by Sharon, who begs John to say he was with her because she has only a learner’s permit. Anyway, while the three of them are cooking up stories for the police, Richie’s car is stolen, so he asks Sharon and John to give him a ride home, to a village 15 miles away, where the police will shortly have set a roadblock for the perpetrators of breaking and entering, assault and battery, arson, vehicular homicide--all of which John will be a helplessly passive party to. By the time John is finally arrested by the local police, the Rube Goldberg plot seems to have run its course; but it’s in the story’s second half that suave, enigmatic Berger really goes into a stretch, bringing John back home to find his wife wining and dining Richie in his latest disguise, deaf to his whispered pleas that this man is dangerous, all the while that Richie is doing his own whispering about how alike he and John are--neither of them cares about anybody but himself, so why don’t they cut loose and take off forever? The presto agitato first half seems at first no deeper than, say, Ed McBain’s Downtown; later, when he raises unsettling questions about the deeper kinship between the psycho and the realtor, Berger still remains noncommittal. The result is by turns exhilarating, disturbing, and finally unsatisfying--as if an amusement-park ride had just dumped you back where you first got on.
Berger’s (Orrie’s Story) powerful 19th novel investigates the familiar question of why bad things happen to good people. John Felton, realtor in a ``medium-sized city’’ in the Northeast, is a paradigm of decency, a ``respectable man with a wife and children’’ and a ``lifetime urge to do right.’’ John’s nightmare begins at breakfast one morning, when he opens his door to a stranger and agrees to help with his stalled car. The car turns out to have been stolen and the stranger to have been released from a psychiatric hospital that very morning, and John’s Good Samaritan deed is rewarded with a catastrophic day that snowballs into a whirlwind crime spree. After a cocktail waitress sideswipes the car, the three become a team, running up charges of hit-and-run, breaking and entering, theft, kidnapping, arson and murder. Victim and victimizer intertwine in a heart-pounding conclusion at a convenience store, and cosmic justice is meted out. Berger couches his frightening, paranoic plot with moral and philosophical underpinnings in sardonic, impeccable `fluid prose’ in previous review prose. (June)
About the Author/作者介绍： Thomas Berger is the author of twenty-two novels. His previous novels include Regiment of Women, Neighbors, and The Feud, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His Little Big Man is known throughout the world.
Thomas Berger 共创作了22本小说。这些小说包括了女性，街坊邻里和长期积怨的团体，并因此获得了普利策奖。他描绘的小人物已经风靡全球。
Thomas Louis Berger生于1924年7月20日，美国小说家。他最出名的小说可能就是流浪汉小说《小人物》，之后由Arthur Penn翻拍成电影。Thomas Berger 在他的创作生涯中对不同的小说类型进行了探索，包括犯罪小说，侦探小说，科幻小说，乌托邦小说，以及对古典神话、亚瑟王的传奇和历险记的再创作。Thomas Berger 对幽默的运用，辛辣的笔触引得许多评论家称他为讽刺作家或是“漫画”小说家，喜欢和描述唱反调。鉴于他对不同类型小说的广泛驾驭，对语言的精准使用和善于探索的智慧，因此他的崇拜者们总是感慨他的天赋和成就不被赞许。
Format:TRADE PAPERBACK
Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE
Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE
Sales in other countries/其他国家销售情况：
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