5 Star Book Review – The Second Captive by Maggie James
- By Michael Smart
- November 24, 2014
- No Comments
Pulse Quickening Suspense
In my reviews of previous Maggie James novels, I’ve mentioned her uncanny talent for planting you inside her characters’ heads, conveying a sense of logical rationality to their psychological dysfunctions. It’s worth repeating, since Maggie’s latest release, The Second Captive, is another excellent example.
The psychological flaws of her characters, so convincingly drawn by an author having no background in psychology, are testament to her talent. Her characters grope like blind persons through the maelstrom of their lives, bumping into bits and pieces of a deeper mystery surrounding them, which they cannot see. If you weren’t inside their heads, you would consider their behavior aberrant, certainly deviant, the kind of morbid and tragic stuff you see on the evening news. Being inside their heads, their behavior is rendered understandable, even reasonable. It’s a perspective this author excels at, creating histories and circumstances for her characters which draw the reader into a fascinating psychological pathology.
The Second Captive also illustrates Maggie’s mastery at combining psychology and suspense. She weaves the threads of these disparate characters and their histories into a compelling mystery, hinted at along the way, but revealed to her characters and readers alike, only after unsuspected twists, turns, and false starts. The kind of suspense to keep you planted in one spot turning page after page until you reach the end, leaving you in hungry anticipation for what Maggie James will conjure up next.
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