{"id":7734,"date":"2019-01-28T07:25:35","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T12:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7734"},"modified":"2019-01-28T07:25:44","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T12:25:44","slug":"the-one-that-got-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7734","title":{"rendered":"***The One That Got Away"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Joe Clifford \u2013 Clifford has an innovative premise for\nthis crime thriller about a woman who turned out to be the last kidnap victim\nof a serial killer plaguing a dreary upstate New York town called Reine. Alex\nSalerno was 17 when she was kidnapped, then rescued, and the murderer brought\nto justice. The town celebrated her and the end of its reign of terror for only\na short while until another girl, Kira Shanks, disappeared and was believed murdered.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was a dozen years ago, and now Alex has made a rare\ntrip back to Reine because a reporter wants to hear her story. This is the\nfirst time anyone has shown a flicker of interest in her in a very long while, and\nAlex wants to believe her story\u2019s worth telling. Maybe the reporter will even\npay for it. She soon learns he\u2019s no reporter, just a journalism student needing\ndirt for a class project that might\u2014or might not\u2014become a story for the college\nnewspaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The student takes hardly a moment before bringing up the\nname Sean Riley, the detective who rescued Alex from that basement bunker,\nstarving, dehydrated, terrified. Riley was the one bright spot in that time,\nthe one person who could evoke her tender feelings. And did. Too bad an affair\nbetween a married detective and a 17-year-old victim could only end badly. Though\nit was a long time ago, it still hurts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The police identified the person they believe took Kira\nShanks, a mentally challenged young man named Benny Brudzienski. When word got\nout, Benny was badly beaten and has spent the years since in a mental hospital,\nunable to speak. In that condition, he will never go to trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alex has tried to forget her life in Reine, and author\nClifford does a good job describing the dismal town. She pretends\u2014to herself,\neven\u2014that she\u2019s helping the student with his story and visits Benny in the mental\nhospital. Something in his eyes suggests more going on inside his brain than\npeople believe, though the chapters told from Bennie\u2019s point of view didn\u2019t\nring true to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that insightful look, Alex is determined to find out\nwhat really happened to Kira. Meanwhile, plenty of people want her to leave it\nalone. Someone is following her. She\u2019s attacked. Riley resurfaces. Because\ntheir past relationship is never far from the mind of either of them, they\nteeter between attraction and hostility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clifford plausibly describes Alex\u2019s initial feelings, but\nnever lets her develop further, replaying the same emotional notes. She\u2019s\nunpleasant and hostile in her dealings with people. It\u2019s puzzling her\npeople-skills are so weak and that anyone would cooperate with her\npseudo-investigation. Yet Alex has caught the eye of one young man determined\nto find a soft spot in her shell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Occasionally, Clifford constructs a too-obvious and\nunnecessary cliff-hanger at the end of a chapter, even though what\u2019s coming\nfollows the predictable plotting of thrillers\u2014the false starts, the red\nherrings, the apparent threats that evaporate, the climactic confrontation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unwanted role of victim was Alex Salerno\u2019s only and brief claim to fame. You can only hope her most recent experience in her home town will finally let her move on. She\u2019s already come a long way from that dark cellar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

photo: xusenru on pixabay<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases\u2014a few pennies to put in a jar to pay my WordPress bills. When you make a purchase through this link on my website, you help me fill the jar. Thank you!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Joe Clifford \u2013 Clifford has an innovative premise for this crime thriller about a woman who turned out to be the last kidnap victim of a serial killer plaguing a dreary upstate New York town called Reine. Alex Salerno … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"***The One That Got Away - what's it like to be the last intended victim of a serial killer? Can you ever truly escape? Alex Salerno returns to her upstate NY home to confront her demons in this thriller.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1335,52,40,126,32],"tags":[1488,1049,1489],"class_list":["post-7734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-amateur-detective","category-crime","category-fiction","category-reading-2","category-thriller","tag-joe-clifford","tag-serial-killer","tag-the-one-that-got-away"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-20K","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/rain-xusenru.jpg?fit=395%2C360&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7736,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7734\/revisions\/7736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}