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Karen Donovan always wanted to be a writer. She waits on tables at a New Orleans eatery and writes every day in her spare time. Her favorite author is Philip Keyes and she devours his books. One day he is signing in a New Orleans book store and she gets to meet and talk to him. Both unattached, she and Philip are attracted to each other and soon Karen is Mrs Keyes and on her way from a tiny roach-infested apartment in New Orleans to a 100-year-old Victorian mansion on Cape Cod. All Karen knows is that Philip's wife has been dead for two years and he has a 16-year-old daughter, Jessie. Jessie is home-schooled by her tutor, Mrs Winn. Jessie is intelligent but rather eccentric. She dresses in black; wears no makeup and her hair usually looks like a bird's nest. Karen's attempts to be friendly are soundly rebuffed. Alone with the two women while Philip completes his latest book tour, Karen is lonely and begins to question her decision to marry a man she hardly knows. Karen makes friends with Bobbie, a young gay man who lives in Provincetown where the Keyes family resides. Shortly after her arrival, Karen learns that the house has a notorious history. In 1922, Lettie Hatch's father and young stepmother were brutally murdered. Although she was acquitted, many believe that Lettie did the awful deed. Karen also finds out that Jessie's mother committed suicide in the attic by hanging herself. Karen has hired Bobbie, who is a carpenter, to remodel the attic into a study where Karen can continue her writing. Karen is disillusioned with her work, feeling that it is not publishable. When she finds Lettie's diary in the attic, she is fascinated by the old story and with the fact that she too is a young stepmother, only a few years older than her 16-year-old stepdaughter. And Lettie's mother also committed suicide. Karen hides the diary and begins to plan a book on the family and the crimes. Not exactly a mystery or a thriller, with perhaps a little bit of horror, NEVER LOOK BACK is hard to place in a specific genre. The author has been compared in reviews to Stephen King, yet while I found this book to be scary, it is not as horrific as some of the early King books. The events of 1922 seem set to repeat themselves, with a cast of characters assembled that exactly replicate the people involved in the original crime. Jessie is convinced she is possessed by Lettie and when she and her boyfriend Chris go to Madame Nadja, a psychic, for help they are not comforted by Nadja's reaction. She tells them there is bad stuff happening and she doesn't want to be involved. Cape Cod is very much a character in this book, especially in the winter months when Provincetown is isolated in a storm. NEVER LOOK BACK is a book to be read in one sitting, and not to be read right before bed! Prepare to be frightened while you are being entertained.
Reviewed by Lorraine Gelly, June 2005
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