Escape the night Book

I felt like I was reading three different types of books pasted together. The first 90 pages is an elegiac memoir of a sweet childhood, a happy Peter Carey, with underlying rumbles of trouble due to his parents' (Charles and Alicia Carey) complicated lives as rich people, but dependent on a dictator of a grandfather, John Carey, and about Charles' brother, Philip, who is deliberately set up by John as a competitor to Charles for a decade in taking over a publishing company that the grandfather started. Charles and Philip could not help but hate each other. John makes sure that every book acquisition is a race between the brothers in making the most money for the company, and that every decision is a threat to their possible advancement in the company. This part of the book is quite literary in tone, primarily due to Patterson's skill at writing.

The second part of the book is a deeper look at the competition between Charles and Philip, as well as exposing the wasting away of Charles' marriage to Alicia. Here, establishing the psychology behind their relationships appears to be the main point, as well as introducing how truly crazy characters, anti-communist spy hunter Englehardt and later, Clayton Barth with his pet psychopath Martin, enter their lives and topple over what is already an anxious setup. This part is the weakest in the writing; it's more like that of a summer beach read of a standard thriller genre, and the part where many readers may forget where they mislaid this book after setting it down somewhere. Charles and Alicia die in a car crash; John rewrites his will; uncle Phillip is expecting to fully own the company one day. However, when John dies, Phillip is disgusted that he is only 49% owner of the company; Peter holds 51% interest, even though still a child. Peter grows up, takes up the reins of his grandfather's company.

The third part begins to unravel the secrets behind the deaths of Charles and Alicia, and why the adult Peter continues to have a nightmare almost every night of his father burning. He has also fallen in love. He understands he is holding back from his beloved, Noelle, so he goes to see a therapist, Dr. Levy, a man who also was his father's best friend in school and who now is a Freudian psychiatrist. (For some reason, the remake movie 'Obsession' with Cliff Robertson popped into my head. I think its because of the soap opera elements, along with my growing realization this was not a 4 star read, was beginning to hit me). Although this part of the book extracted groans from me regarding the obvious attempt to link Freudian theories to the development of the Careys' relationships to each other, the book actually develops in this last section into a big cinematic ending. Everything is revealed, with guns banging away and a heroine to be saved from a horrible death (no explosions, though).

If I'd been given a more detailed synopsis about the book, I don't think I'd have chosen to read it. But once I'd started it, I was interested enough to finish it. Is that a back-assed recommendation, or what? The writing is expert as far as putting sentences down on paper, but otherwise if books could be disturbed 13-year olds, as changeable in focus and personality as the wind, I'd describe this book as a young teenager. However, it is definitely an R rated book, with scenes of graphic sex described.

Truthfully, I finished it also partially because I purchased it, and also since I like this author usually (he's much better in later books).