The Girl with a Clock for a Heart: A Novel

by Peter Swanson Narrated by Paul Boehmer

Overview

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.

Peter Swanson's The Girl with a Clock for a Heart is a top thriller book that will keep you on the edge of your seat with its intense suspense and noir mystery.

The story follows George Foss, whose life is turned upside down when his ex-girlfriend, a mysterious woman with a dark past, reappears and asks for his help.

As he gets pulled into a dangerous world of lies, secrets, and murder, George must confront his own demons and make a choice that could cost him everything.

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Editorial Reviews

Washington Post

Who are literature’s most lethal women? . . . Here’s a new contender: Liana Decter, who causes endless heartbreak and occasional death in Peter Swanson’s compulsively readable [The Girl with a Clock for a Heart] . . . should be a contender for crime fiction’s best first novel of 2014.

Boston Globe

The parallel stories unwind relentlessly with audacious and spectacular twists . . . An intense mix of noir, pulp fiction, and fun . . . The most unsurprising aspect of this book? It’s already been optioned for a film.

Wiley Cash

An edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller that dares you to turn the next page . . . This novel burns faster and hotter than a lit fuse, and you’ll be feeling its heat long after the explosive ending.

Dennis Lehane

What do you say when a woman who broke your heart years ago and is wanted for questioning in connection to a murder pops back into your life to ask a favor? If she’s as alluring as Liana Dector, you say, ‘Yes.’ And hope you survive . . . The Girl with a Clock for a Heart is a twisty, sexy, electric thrill ride.

Financial Times (UK)

The labyrinthine plot here has a grip of high-tensile steel.

New York Journal of Books

[A] roller coaster thrill-fest of a ride, filled with deliciously wicked moments of mystery, murder, and mayhem, double-cross and deception. A cerebral noir thriller debut.

Harper's Bazaar

In The Girl with a Clock for a Heart a long-lost lover resurfaces, with chaos in her wake. A must read!

USA Today

The book has pace to burn. It feels like a throwback to Ross MacDonald’s flawed but relentless work . . . glimmers with bright and original moments.

Financial Times

The labyrinthine plot here has a grip of high-tensile steel.

Kirkus Reviews

2014-01-23
In Swanson's debut crime thriller, a sedate man encounters the mysterious woman who ignited his passion years ago—and 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 death—only 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 quite—it 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 intrigue—and levels of danger—out 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 Liana—who has great potential, possibly to be explored in the sequel this book points toward—is a little too purely a femme fatale, with the emphasis—as usual—on 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.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173459169
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	02/04/2014
Edition description:	Unabridged

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