On Borrowed Time

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. At the start of this excellent stand-alone from Rosenfelt (Down to the Wire), 29-year-old journalist Richard Kilmer is planning to ask the love of his life, Jennifer Ryan, to marry him. But on a drive from Manhattan's Upper West Side, where they share an apartment, to Jen's hometown two hours outside the city, they have an accident and Jen disappears. After Richard discovers to his astonishment that Jen's family, her friends--even his friends--claim never to have known her, he begins a series of magazine articles about his unsettling experience (a nice variation on the frequent but unconvincing hush-hush imperative of many thrillers). Meanwhile, it becomes clear that some nefarious memory experiment involving Richard is underway. The arrival from Wisconsin of Allison Tynes, who says she's Jen's identical twin sister, may strike some as contrived, but all will marvel at the way Rosenfelt builds suspense while keeping the plot line from veering too far into the kooky and hokey. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

From Booklist This one pulls you in and won't let you go. Skillful as Rosenfelt is, he can't take all the credit. He's working a sure-fire theme, one that's at least as old as Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes and as new as Jodie Foster's Flight Plan. The lead's traveling companion suddenly isn't there. Frantic inquiries reveal this person never existed. The lead is tagged a crazy and is in danger of arrest. So it is with Rosenfelt's hero. In a moment, his lover is gone. Even the settings where the romance played out have vanished. Rosenfelt's fans have always appreciated his turn on the crime novel. His heroes are not troubled, fragile men but cheerful chaps not above enjoying the puzzle they've been thrown into. This novel suffers the plot's curse: there is no way the solution can be as intriguing as the mystery. And along the way to a solution, a couple of significant holes in the story's infrastructure appear. Never mind. The novel still works a spooky turn on the old chestnut, and readers will enjoy being mystified one more time. --Don Crinklaw