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ANNIVERSARY, THE
by Amy Gutman
Little, Brown & Company, June 2003
338 pages
$21.95
ISBN: 0316381209


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Most ladies found Steven Gage to be the perfect man. He was charming, engaging, good looking, and very attentive. The only problem was that he murdered over 100 women.

This fact was hard for his last girlfriend, Laura Seton, to believe, even though she saw some definite evidence of his deadly deeds. She just didnšt want to believe it. But it came as no shock to anyone when Steven was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Ten years later, five years after Gagešs execution, Laura has changed her name and is now called Callie Thayer. After surviving a disastrous marriage, Callie has created a new life for herself with her daughter, Anna. She owns her own home in a quiet little town and has a new boyfriend who is also a police officer. Everything is going smoothly in Calliešs life until one day she gets a note from an unknown person that says "Happy anniversary. I haven't forgotten you." She has no idea who sent the note and doesnšt think much about it until she realizes that it is the anniversary of Stevenšs execution.

Two other women also received the same strange anniversary note. One was Melanie White, a lawyer who was one of Steven Gagešs defense attorneys. She is now outwardly successful, but inside, shešs beset by terrible self-doubt. The third recipient of a note is author Diane Massy, whose books are about murderers. Steven Gage was the subject of her first and very successful book, it was the story that made her career. But now, Diane has been struggling with a writeršs block so severe that she has had to recluse herself in a deserted house near the sea in order to meet her latest deadline.

Eventually, all three women figure out that these strange notes have to do with Stevenšs guilty verdict. When one of the women is murdered and another is brutally attacked, the remaining woman is positive that Steven has something to do with this violence. How could this be? Steven had been executed, but obviously his horrible legacy has touched another gullible mind and has brought about another killer.

THE ANNIVERSARY is author Amy Gutmanšs second novel. Gutman has been a teacher and a practicing lawyer in Manhattan and brings a solid sense of the law to her books.

Unfortunately in THE ANNIVERSARY, Gutman has decided to try and get the reader to feel a bond with all three of the woman, and jumps from one to the other so much at the beginning of the novel that the reader doesnšt spend enough time with any of them to make that link. Each woman is also very troubled with a long history of unhappiness, and that extensive laundry list of woes makes it difficult for the reader to build a strong emotional connection to any of them.

The book also inundates the readers with red herrings. Just about every male in the story is the potential killer, from Calliešs boyfriend to the former FBI agent who changed his career after the Stevenšs trial, to every guy who is known to any of the women in the book.  

By the end of the novel, I didnšt even care that the last woman was in peril. I didnšt like her or respect the way she met the challenge of finding the new killer at large. Because she didnšt want to admit that her life would have to change by facing reality, she put everyone around her at risk. I was almost cheering for the killer to get to her by the end the novel.

THE ANNIVERSARY starts out with a powerful court room scene and you get the idea that you will be in for a fast paced read, but almost right away the book is bogged down with changing lead characters and their histories. After a while you canšt help but feel disappointed at the actions of the potential victims and the motivation of the newest killer.

I canšt recommend this book.

Reviewed by Sharon Katz, June 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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