Don't Close Your Eyes

Stephanie Chalice is a cop's cop. She's bold, smart, independent and beautiful--a powerhouse working in NYPD's homicide unit. She's seen a lot in her years on the force, but she's never come across anything like the case she's up against now. A murdering psychopath is stalking Manhattan, on the prowl for a very special type of woman. Part of his twisted game is intentionally leaving clues for the police, clues designed not only to taunt, but to do something much worse. Will Chalice be able to discover his real purpose before another woman dies?

BookWire Review

DON'T CLOSE YOUR EYES
LAWRENCE KELTER, Leisure Books, New York, NY, $6.99 US, paperback,
(322p)
ISBN: 0-8439-5554-6

"Don't Close Your Eyes" begins with a whimper and a bang--two seemingly
unrelated deaths. The first is a teenage girl whose asthma suffocates
her while sleeping. The second is a man shot on the tram that connects
Roosevelt Island to Manhattan. Lying next to the man is the real
puzzle: a woman who might appear to have died of natural causes if not
for the handwritten note stuffed in her mouth that simply reads "Look
back."

Murder mystery thrillers are often driven by tough, fast-talking,
streetwise detectives with a sad story about their past and a penchant
for nabbing perps. The cop on the case in "Don't Close Your Eyes" is
all these things and more. Meet Stephanie Chalice. She's a smart,
beautiful, 28-year-old NYPD homicide detective whose acerbic repartee
is like an arsenal of nuclear missiles--it convinces her male
colleagues that she means business.

Behind all the bluster, though, is a young woman with fierce passions
who shows the same tremendous dedication to her ill mother as she does
her job. Chalice is an excellent detective, but it comes at a cost. She
suffers recurring nightmares, and obsesses that the diabetes that
killed her father and weakens her mother will one day come for her.

When a second woman is found dead with a rag in her mouth and another
cryptic note nearby, Chalice realizes a serial killer stalks
Manhattan's Upper East Side. Her detective work combines intelligence,
persistence, a skilled partner, and well-connected friends. Secret
allies also work on her behalf to thwart dangers that lie just beyond
her periphery. As she follows a trail of clues and corpses to the
murderer, she also pursues her own demons, uncovering startling truths
about who she really is.

"Don't Close Your Eyes" is entertaining and engrossing. Detective
Chalice is a strong character, the killer is devilishly intriguing, and
the well-paced plot will keep your eyes wide open.
BookWire Review

Assignment: PCA46 – The Importance of Darkness Deadline: November 16 (Sunday), 2008 Image tag: pca46 From: The Tamed Shrew (Kate) Mission: This is a one week assignment. It runs from November 9th and ends November 16th 2008. We all know the importance of light and lighting when we take our photos. This assignment is for you to show the importance of darkness. I think we are all influenced by contrast in a photo. Our eyes are automatically drawn to the point of maximum contrast either of light and dark – or opposing colours. I want you to show me your deliberate use of this contrast in terms of lighting. You can use it to show Form, in a Portrait, a Landscape, Design or Fine Art or in any way you feel you can show us the drama and power of darkness in a picture. WIT (What it Took) First, I was challenged because my long lens had to go back to Canon for warranty work, so all I had to work with was the 18-55mm. So really did not know how to act because I think in 300mm not 55mm terms. I went downtown early today, the sky was clear, the air had a cold chill to it, so I figured I would to to the water side of Tampa near the docks and the small Islands that are near downtown and see what I could find. The sun was behind this building, (Verizon Tower) and there were large flocks of Vultures Circling as they do this time of year downtown. Instead of going for the buildings that were reflecting the sun, I went for the one hiding the sun, went for the dark side of the building. I bracketed at 1 stop and was shooting in 3 shot bursts on most everything. Here I liked the dark details in the shadows, with the hint of the sun and (BONUS) got one of the Vultures highlighted as well. (you know I had to find a way to get a bird in here some way). Camera: Canon EOS 40D Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/500) Aperture: f/9 Focal Length: 55 mm ISO Speed: 100 Exposure Bias: -4/3 EV Flash: Flash did not fire

In Your Eyes - Peter Gabriel love I get so lost, sometimes days pass and this emptiness fills my heart when I want to run away I drive off in my car but whichever way I go I come back to the place you are all my instincts, they return and the grand facade, so soon will burn without a noise, without my pride I reach out from the inside in your eyes the light the heat in your eyes I am complete in your eyes I see the doorway to a thousand churches in your eyes the resolution of all the fruitless searches in your eyes I see the light and the heat in your eyes oh, I want to be that complete I want to touch the light the heat I see in your eyes love, I don't like to see so much pain so much wasted and this moment keeps slipping away I get so tired of working so hard for our survival I look to the time with you to keep me awake and alive and all my instincts, they return and the grand facade, so soon will burn without a noise, without my pride I reach out from the inside in your eyes the light the heat in your eyes I am complete in your eyes I see the doorway to a thousand churches in your eyes the resolution of all the fruitless searches in your eyes I see the light and the heat in your eyes oh, I want to be that complete I want to touch the light, the heat I see in your eyes in your eyes in your eyes in your eyes in your eyes in your eyes in your eyes

In Close Your Eyes, the author of the bestselling How to Be Lost spins another mesmerizing tale of buried family secrets.

For most of her life, Lauren Mahdian has been certain of two things: that her mother is dead, and that her father is a murderer.

Before the horrific tragedy, Lauren led a sheltered life in a wealthy corner of America, in a town outside Manhattan on the banks of Long Island Sound, a haven of luxurious homes, manicured lawns, and seemingly perfect families. Here Lauren and her older brother, Alex, thought they were safe.

But one morning, six-year-old Lauren and eight-year-old Alex awoke after a night spent in their tree house to discover their mother’s body and their beloved father arrested for the murder.

Years later, Lauren is surrounded by uncertainty. Her one constant is Alex, always her protector, still trying to understand the unraveling of his idyllic childhood. But Lauren feels even more alone when Alex reveals that he’s been in contact over the years with their imprisoned father—and that he believes he and his sister have yet to learn the full story of their mother’s death.

Then Alex disappears.

As Lauren is forced to peek under the floorboards of her carefully constructed memories, she comes to question the version of her history that she has clung to so fiercely. Lauren’s search for the truth about what happened on that fateful night so many years ago is a riveting tale that will keep readers feverishly turning pages.

A Letter from Author Amanda Eyre Ward

I grew up in Rye, New York, a small town outside of New York City. In 1988, I was sixteen years old. I smoked cigarettes in my room, thinking Trident gum would mask the scent. I made a fake ID and laminated it at the library, then used the ID to visit bars in nearby towns: Bumper’s, Streets, Tammany Hall.
On January 1, 1989, my friends and I woke up, heads pounding, in the living room of a stranger’s apartment in Manhattan. We walked to Grand Central and rode the Stamford local back to Rye. By mid-day, we heard that during the midnight hours of New Year’s Eve, there had been a murder in Larchmont, a neighboring town.
An Indian couple, both doctors, had been stabbed to death in their bedroom, throats slashed, their bodies mutilated. It seemed impossible that something like this could happen in the suburbs. Fear travelled silently along the Boston Post Road, past Baskin Robbins and the Smoke Shop, to Dogwood Lane, where I lived with my family in a stunningly beautiful home. To me, the message was clear: danger was everywhere.
The murder was not solved. Four-and-a-half years went by. My parents split up, and I went to college. I thought about the murder from time to time, trying to understand how a stranger had broken the spell of Rye, smashed through the safety we had all thought money could buy.
In 1993, we found out that the murderer was one of us, a teenage boy, a local. The son of a bank president. He had been blind drunk, he told a room full of people at an AA meeting. He was afraid he may have broken a door pane, entered his childhood home, where his family no longer lived, taken a knife from a kitchen drawer, and savagely attacked the strangers sleeping in his parents’ bedroom. He later said he didn’t remember anything about it. He had been in an alcoholic blackout, but now he had nightmares.
At his trial, a psychiatrist said, "Probably the most typical behavior during a blackout is finding the way home....It's almost as if he were going back in time and eliminating the people that he sought to blame for all his problems back when he was seven years old."
He is now in jail.
The story of the New Year’s Eve murder has always stayed with me, and eventually evolved into Close Your Eyes. I think, in writing the book, I wanted not only to understand what happened to a boy who was one of us, what made him into a murderer, but also to create a world where this wrong was righted, and a broken town was sewn back together. I wanted to imagine a town that was loving and safe, a place that might never have existed in real life.