The girl with a clock for a heart

Already optioned for film, The Girl with a Clock for a Heart is Peter Swanson's electrifying tale of romantic noir, with shades of Hitchcock and reminiscent of the classic movie Body Heat. It is the story of a man swept into a vortex of irresistible passion and murder when an old love mysteriously reappears.

On an ordinary Friday evening at his favorite Boston tavern, George Foss's comfortable, predictable life is shattered when a beautiful woman sits down at the bar, a woman who vanished without a trace twenty years ago.

Liana Dector isn't just an ex-girlfriend, the first love George couldn't quite forget. She's also a dangerous enigma and quite possibly a cold-blooded killer wanted by the police. Suddenly, she's back--and she needs George's help. Ruthless men believe she stole some money . . . and they will do whatever it takes to get it back.

George knows Liana is trouble. But he can't say no--he never could--so he makes a choice that will plunge him into a terrifying whirlpool of lies, secrets, betrayal, and murder from which there is no sure escape.

Bold and masterful, full of malicious foreboding and subtle surprises, The Girl with a Clock for a Heart is an addictive, nonstop thriller--an ever-tightening coil of suspense that grips you right up to its electrifying end.

Author Notes

Peter Swanson, a best-selling author and graduate of Trinity College, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Emerson College, is the author of three novels: The Girl With a Clock For a Heart, an LA Times Book Award finalist; The Kind Worth Killing, winner of the New England Society Book Award, and finalist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger; and his most recent, Her Every Fear. His books have been translated into 30 languages.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

At the start of Swanson's Machiavellian debut noir, magazine business manager George Foss spots Liana Decter, a college girlfriend he hasn't seen in nearly two decades, in a Boston bar. Back then, George got off relatively unscathed: a broken heart and only peripheral involvement in a murder probe. But this time promises to be far more dangerous. Liana, a wanted fugitive going under the alias Jane Byrne, asks George for a big favor-she wants him to serve as a go-between to return most of the half million she stole from her married sugar daddy, shady furniture magnate Gerald MacLean, and to persuade Gerald to call off the goon who's been threatening her. Predictably, little of this goes according to plan. Swanson gives readers an adrenaline rush through all the hairpin turns, but is less successful in making his central femme fatale either convincing or interesting. Cast Michelle Williams in the film version and it might be a different story. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Associates. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Review

In Swanson's debut crime thriller, a sedate man encounters the mysterious woman who ignited his passion years agoand now plunges him into the depths of noir. George Foss is the accountant for a well-heeled old Boston literary magazine, and he lives a staid and quiet life: Red Sox on the tube, a cat, a low-heat semiromance with a co-worker. But one night in his local bar, he spots his long-lost first love from college, a woman whom he knew as Audrey. Her real name, he's since discovered, is Liana Decter. In the novel's most affecting and effective scenes, we see George, a lovelorn college freshman, head to Florida after "Audrey's" suicide is reported over Christmas break. He gets himself clumsily, boyishly embroiled in the mystery surrounding that deathonly to discover that Audrey/Liana is not the corpse. By the time George retreats northward to resume his freshman year, she's suspected in two murders and has disappeared for good. Or not quiteit is Liana in the neighborhood pub, and soon, she's pressed her loyal sap into service as a go-between in returning some stolen money to a wealthy and shady man with whom she's been involved. George recognizes that she is that most durable noir trope, the belle dame sans merci, but if anything, the knowledge only enhances her appeal. Soon, he finds himself several coils of intrigueand levels of dangerout of his depth. The pace is fast, the prose mostly smooth, and the plot genuinely twisty. But the characters aren't quite fully fleshed; George is sometimes too one-note in his role as helplessly enamored milquetoast, and Lianawho has great potential, possibly to be explored in the sequel this book points towardis a little too purely a femme fatale, with the emphasisas usualon the second word rather than the first. We know her almost exclusively by her effect on men. Seemingly pre-measured for the movies, sometimes to its detriment but often to good effect; all in all, a quick, deft, promising first crime novel.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Liana Dector, the title character in this debut thriller, is a master at reinventing herself, and, early on, her boyfriend, George Foss, becomes ensnared in her schemes. George and Liana then known as Audrey Beck became a couple in their freshman year at college in Connecticut, with their semester-long romance ending when Audrey presumably committed suicide at home in Florida during winter break. When George learns that Liana and the real Audrey have switched identities, and that Liana may have killed her cohort, he continually watches for her until, nearly 20 years later, he spots her at a bar in Boston. Liana, now known as Jane Byrne, asks for a favor, trusting that George will help her rather than turn her over to the authorities; George, both smitten and curious, is hooked. In alternate chapters, Swanson unreels the story of the teenage lovers and advances to the present-day quagmire into which George steps. Driven by the power of first love, this dangerous mix of sex and lies tumbles to an inevitable conclusion. Optioned for a feature film.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2010 Booklist

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