THRILLERS

User I.D.

By Jenefer Shute (Houghton Mifflin, $23).

Grade: A

It's said that 10 million Americans have been victims of identity theft. The news is filled with warnings about how to avoid it, but little about the crime as an existential predicament.

What would it be like to have someone sucking your identity dry? At that point, who are you? These are some of the intriguing questions posed by this remarkably adept and engaging little book.

Vera De Sica leads a humble life as a professor of English as a Second Language at a small college in New York City. She has a younger boyfriend whom she sees more out of lust than love. Her life is in a deep rut, and Vera often wishes she could escape it altogether. Ennui may be a leading cause of suicide.

On an academic trip to California, Vera's rental car is stolen just as she drops it off. Worse, Vera has left a receipt in the car and enough other information for the thief's girlfriend, Charlene, to turn it into gold - gold mined from Vera's credit and name.

At first Vera hasn't a clue that anything untoward is happening; then she starts receiving calls from collection agencies. Someone somewhere is improving his life immensely at Vera's expense.

Charlene is an unhappy cosmetic salesperson with an abusive boyfriend, and she decides she must find a way out of her life. Vera's life seems to be the perfect alternative. So, Charlene begins becoming Vera. As Vera feels more and more diminished, Charlene, the new Vera, becomes more empowered.

It leaves the original Vera wondering what the true meaning of self is, even as she starts digging herself out from under a gigantic financial mess. Meanwhile, Charlene is trying to decide what model BMW a rich New York professor would drive so that she can get one.

As Charlene digs further afield on the Net in search of the pile of cash she believes Vera has stashed, Vera starts her own Web scam to trap a thief. It soon becomes clear to Vera that it isn't the money that's the problem, even as Charlene is realizing that money isn't the solution either.

User I.D. is a thoroughly modern novel that is so much more than it's alternating chapters featuring Vera and Charlene. Or is that Vera and Vera?

UNREAL WORLDS

High Druid of Shannara: Straken

By Terry Brooks (DelRey, $26.95).

Grade: A-

Trilogies and other series books are the bane of a reviewer's existence. To quote Tolkien's Gollum, "We hates 'em we do . . ."

Once we read the first installment, we have to stay with the series or our lives remain unfulfilled; we have to wait at least a year between episodes, and by then, we've forgotten most of what happened in the previous book - and it's rare that an author provides a convenient summary at the beginning of subsequent adventures.

Nevertheless, in masochistic delight, writers like Dan Simmons and Terry Brooks force us to start . . . and finish the darn things anyway.

Finally, Brooks has finished the High Druid of Shannara trilogy and the 14th book in the Shannara saga. And thank the gods of the Four Lands, the ending is wonderfully satisfying, appropriate and unexpected.

Readers who have not read Jarka Ruus and Tanequil have to read them first or they will be lost from the first page of Straken. That being said, the third is Brooks at his best, as the wily author ties together all the loose ends.

At the end of Tanequil, Pen Ohmsford had sacrificed two of his fingers to obtain the darkwand that will enable him to enter the "Forbidding" and rescue his aunt Grianne, the former Ilse Witch and rightful Ard Rhys. He was also forced to give up the love of his life, the blind and beautiful Cinnaminson, who became an elemental spirit of the forest. The darkwand will also be a catalyst in awakening in Pen the powers of the Wishsong.

Now the unlikely hero must find a way to get past Shadea a'Ru and her minions and into Grianne's quarters in Paranor, fight the dangers of the Forbidding, save his aunt and banish a demon who threatens the fabric of the Four Lands.

Meanwhile, his parents, Bek and Rue, who have been imprisoned in the dungeons of Paranor, will effect a near impossible escape. And all the principles come together for the long-awaited clash between the Ard Rhys and the usurper, as the forces of magic determine the future of the Four Lands.

In his Christmas letter, Brooks revealed that his next work will be a "pre-Shannara history from the advent of the Great Wars to the formation of the First Council of Druids." He predicts six books, appropriately (gasp!) a hexology.

MYSTERY

For Edgar

By Sheldon Rusch (Berkley Prime Crime, $23.95).

Grade: B

Serial murders with a theme, even a literary theme, aren't exactly new, but here's one that harks back to the first mystery writer - Edgar Allan Poe, whose mysteries and horror stories started it all before the Civil War and after whom America's top mystery award is named.

Elizabeth Hewitt is an investigator for the Illinois State Police who takes the case when a little girl and her mother out for a hike find a skull nailed to a tree in a state park. It doesn't take Hewitt long to figure out where the rest of the victim is, and soon the Poe theme becomes clear with a string of gruesome crimes.

Hewitt just happens to be the ex-girlfriend of a Northwestern English professor who specializes in Poe - what a coincidence! - so naturally she gives him a call for a literary look at murder. As they rekindle their relationship, Hewitt finds herself haunted by another death, the suicide of her roommate back in college.

About midway through the book we learn the probable identity of the murderer, but the plot remains focused on Hewitt's intellectual and emotional duel with him, leaving us to wonder if anyone's trying to find the guy before he kills again. This is less a police procedural than a psychological novel, but Hewitt makes an appealing heroine, brave and darkly funny as she puzzles through the grim crimes.

And grim they are - murder after ugly murder.

The inevitability of the crimes drains some of the suspense from the book, although first-time author Sheldon Rusch winds up with a frightening and mostly unexpected conclusion. Poe fans will enjoy the allusions, but be prepared for a high level of violence.

Back to Top